😴 Do you have difficulties falling asleep because your thoughts won't leave you alone?

This problem haunted me for a long time. It didn't matter if I was sleepy or not. Often it took me more than 1 hour to fall asleep. Consequently, I would be really tired in the morning and unproductive during the day. Mostly, this repeated 3-4 nights and then I would be so tired that I just fell asleep on the couch at around 6:00 pm.

👊 One day I made the decision I want to fight this battle!

Sleep is necessary for survival. It's necessary for so many things. So I tried out a bunch of methods.

Reading on the phone was not helpful because the blue light would keep me awake. Also, the articles would give me even new input for my thoughts. Listening to music didn't help me because I could easily continue thinking. Just laying down and waiting to fall asleep wasn't the solution either.

A couple of methods weren't bad at all (preventing blue light, meditating before going to bed, taking a hot bath, reading books, etc.). They made me sleepy. But as soon as I laid down on my bed, it seemed like a magical force would activate my brain again.

✨ The one thing that helped me

One evening, I tried Audiobooks. I even remembered the first audiobook I listened to (Monster 1983 on Audible - absolutely recommended!). I set the timer to 30 minutes, and guess what? I fell asleep at this time! And ever since then, this method doesn't disappoint me and worked in 95% of all cases. In the rest of the cases, I start a second timer again with 30 minutes and then I would fall asleep in this one.

Let me tell you the primary reasons why I love this method and why I think it worked for me:

👉 It prevents you from (over)thinking. You literally can't think because you are listening to the audiobook.

👉 If you are not falling asleep in your interval, no worries. Start a second interval and you will fall asleep very likely.

👉 What is the worst thing that can happen? Well, you listened 30 minutes to an audiobook. In a year that would be around 180 hours, and with an average audiobook duration of 10 hours that's an additional 18 books per year.

👉 You exactly know when you fell asleep. Note down the time you went to bed (e. g. at 10:30 pm) and start the timer (e. g. for 30 minutes). On the next day, check the last minute you can remember - it's when you fell asleep (e. g. after 18 minutes). This means you fell asleep at 10:48 pm.

👉 You don't need light and your body will learn about your personal sleep routine. So it will very likely keep working if your body understands this (going to bed & turning on the audiobook = sleep mode).

👉 There are so many great audiobooks. I personally pick historical or fantasy novels because they do a great job of pulling me out of this real-world with my thoughts into another epic world. I also tried nonfiction, where ironically I would fall asleep very quickly, but not remember anything the next morning. For fiction, it mostly takes me up to 30 minutes to fall asleep, but I remember what happened. I wonder why. 🤔

✅ What you should take away

If you only take one thing away from this essay, I want it to be the following:

Please, don't sacrifice your sleep. 🙏

If you're an overthinker, maybe listening to audiobooks can help you. Try it out, experiment with the timer and find your perfect category of audiobooks. Ideally, go to bed 30 minutes earlier.

If it doesn't work for you, try other methods. You will find a method that will work for you. I did, and so can you do it. 🙌