How to fall asleep fast: 6 methods and sleep hygiene

The fastest fix is timing

Most advice about falling asleep fast is about the last ten minutes in bed. The bigger lever is the hour you choose to lie down. If you go to bed before your body is ready, no breathing trick will close the gap; if you go to bed tired, at a time your clock expects, you often need no trick at all.

Two rules do most of the work. First, go to bed when you feel sleepy — heavy eyelids, yawning, reading the same line twice — rather than at a time you have decided is virtuous. Second, choose a lights-out time that fits whole sleep cycles before your alarm. A cycle lasts roughly 90 minutes, so a 6:30 am alarm points to about 10:45 pm (five cycles plus fifteen minutes to drift off) or 9:15 pm (six). The bedtime calculator does that sum for any alarm. Going to bed at the right point means you are not lying there for an hour waiting for pressure to build, and you wake near the end of a cycle instead of in the middle of one.

A reasonable target for “fast” is the normal range. Most healthy people fall asleep within 15 to 20 minutes of lying down. If you want the long version of what that number means, and why dropping off in two minutes is not the compliment it sounds like, see how long it should take to fall asleep.

Six techniques compared

None of these is magic, and the evidence for each is thinner than the internet suggests. Here is what each one asks of you and what is actually known.

4-7-8 breathing

Lie on your back with your eyes closed. Breathe out completely through your mouth. Breathe in quietly through your nose while counting to four, hold the breath for a count of seven, then breathe out slowly through your mouth for a count of eight. That is one cycle. A set is six cycles, about two minutes.

In a 2022 study of 43 adults aged 19 to 25, three sets of six cycles, with a minute of normal breathing between sets, lowered heart rate and systolic blood pressure, both in people who had slept normally and in people who had been kept short of sleep. That is a sign the body is settling. It is not proof of faster sleep: the study did not measure how long anyone took to fall asleep. If the long hold makes you feel short of breath, shorten all three counts and keep the ratio.

Muscle relaxation and the military method

Progressive muscle relaxation works through the body one group at a time: tense a muscle group gently for a few seconds, then let it go and notice the difference. Start with your feet and move up through calves, thighs, stomach, hands, arms, shoulders and finally the face. Most people find the release is where the useful part happens; the tension is just there to make the release obvious.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s 2021 guideline for adults with long-running sleep trouble lists progressive muscle relaxation, slow abdominal breathing and guided imagery under “relaxation therapy” and gives it a conditional recommendation — a real but cautious endorsement: worth trying, not guaranteed to help everyone.

The “military method” that circulates online is a fast version of the same thing, with no tensing. Relax the muscles of your face, including the jaw, tongue and the area around your eyes. Let your shoulders drop and your arms go heavy, one side and then the other. Breathe out and let your chest loosen. Relax your thighs, then your calves and feet. Then spend about ten seconds picturing one calm scene — a canoe on a still lake, a dark warm room — or repeating “don’t think” to yourself. We could not find a study that tests it under that name, so treat claims of two-minute sleep as marketing. As a routine, it is harmless and easy to remember.

The cognitive shuffle

If your problem is a mind that will not stop planning, the cognitive shuffle gives it a job too boring to be interesting. Pick a neutral word, such as “bedside”. Take its first letter, b, and think of as many words starting with b as you can — bread, bicycle, bucket — picturing each one for a few seconds. When you run dry, move to the next letter, e. Most people do not get to the end of the word.

The idea comes from Luc Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist at Simon Fraser University, who calls it serial diverse imagining. In a study of 154 university students who complained of racing thoughts at bedtime, it was as effective as fifteen minutes of structured problem-solving before bed at reducing pre-sleep arousal and the effort of falling asleep, with the advantage that you do it lying down. That result was presented at a sleep conference in 2016, which makes it promising rather than settled. A related trick from the NHS: before bed, write a short list of what you need to do tomorrow, so the plan is on paper instead of in your head.

If it is not working, get up

After roughly twenty minutes awake, the most useful move is to stop trying. Leave the bed, sit somewhere dim, do something dull, and come back when you feel sleepy. The NHS gives the same advice, and the 2021 guideline counts getting out of bed when unable to sleep as part of stimulus control, one of its recommended behavioural methods. The reasons, and what to do with the time, are in can’t fall asleep after 20 minutes.

Sound and caffeine

Steady sound does not put you to sleep, but it can hide the door slam or the late car that would otherwise snap a drowsy brain back to alert. One small laboratory study found broadband sound shortened the time to fall asleep by about 38% in a noisy setting; a 2021 systematic review judged the overall evidence low quality. Keep it quiet and put it on a timer. You can play brown noise or rain right in the page, and our free iPhone app, Fall Asleep, layers rain or waves with a timer that fades out.

Caffeine is the most common reason a good routine fails. In the only controlled trial on timing, 400 mg taken six hours before bed still cost more than an hour of sleep. Check yours with the last coffee calculator.

Sleep hygiene

These are the habits that make the tricks above work. “Sleep hygiene” means the habits and the bedroom around your sleep. It is not a cure for long-running sleep problems — the same 2021 guideline says it should not be used as the only approach for chronic insomnia — but for a normal sleeper it decides whether the techniques above have anything to work with. The checklist below is where the Sleep Foundation, the CDC and the NHS overlap.

• The same wake-up time every day, weekends included. It anchors your body clock; bedtime then falls into place. The CDC and the NHS both put a regular bed and wake time first.
• Daylight in the morning, dim light at night. Open the curtains when you get up; lower the lights in the last hour.
• Caffeine in the morning only. The CDC advises avoiding it in the afternoon or evening.
• Screens off before bed. The CDC says at least 30 minutes, the Sleep Foundation a 30- to 60-minute device-free buffer, the NHS an hour.
• A cool, dark, quiet bedroom. The Sleep Foundation suggests erring on the cool side, around 65 °F. For heat, see too hot to sleep; for streetlights and standby LEDs, how dark your bedroom should be. Earplugs or steady sound cover noise.
• No large meal or alcohol close to bed. The NHS suggests avoiding alcohol and nicotine for one to two hours before bed; alcohol may make you drowsy but disturbs sleep later in the night.
• A short wind-down. About 30 minutes of something calm — reading on paper, stretching, the breathing above.
• Short, early naps. A long nap late in the afternoon takes pressure off the night.
• Keep track for two weeks. The printable sleep diary shows which of these actually changes your nights, which beats guessing.

If trouble falling asleep goes on for weeks despite all this, that is a reason to talk to a doctor rather than to a calculator. This site covers timing, not treatment.

Questions people ask

How can I fall asleep in 5 minutes?

Mostly by being sleepy when you lie down: a consistent wake-up time, no caffeine in the afternoon, and lights out at a time your body expects. A breathing or relaxation routine helps the last stretch. But most healthy adults take 15 to 20 minutes, and dropping off in a few minutes every night usually means you are short on sleep.

Does the military method really work in two minutes?

We found no study that tests it by name. Its steps — relaxing the face and body in order, slow breathing, picturing a calm scene — are the same parts used in relaxation methods that sleep-medicine guidelines do support, so it is a reasonable routine to try. The two-minute promise is not something anyone has measured.

What is the 4-7-8 breathing method?

Breathe out fully, breathe in quietly through the nose for a count of 4, hold for 7, then breathe out slowly through the mouth for 8. In one small study, three sets of six cycles lowered heart rate and blood pressure in young adults. Nobody has yet measured whether it shortens the time to fall asleep.

What should I do if I can't sleep after 20 minutes?

Get up. Sit somewhere dim, do something dull on paper, and return to bed when you feel sleepy. It keeps the bed linked with sleep rather than with lying awake.

What are the basic rules of sleep hygiene?

The same wake-up time every day, daylight in the morning, no caffeine in the afternoon or evening, screens off 30 to 60 minutes before bed, a cool, dark and quiet bedroom, and no large meal or alcohol close to bedtime.