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any advice on falling asleep quickly? I love naps but most times it take me 30+ minutes just to fall asleep (+ feeling groggy when I wake up) so a 15min nap would often take an hour of my day


Set a timer for 25 minutes. Lie or sit somewhere with an eye mask on. When the alarm goes off, get back to work.

Repeat until successful. Your body will learn that the "30+ minutes just to fall asleep" count against the rest time.

The eye mask tells your brain it's sleepy time, and if you're at the office also tells others not to interrupt you.


Exactly this, OP. Eventually you will fall asleep, the brain will slowly adapt.


Not OP, but I'll take a swing at this.

I do 15-20 minute "naps" on a regular basis. I find them to be equally refreshing regardless of whether I actually fall asleep. If I do fall asleep, it's normally only for a minute or two. As far as I can tell, the refreshing effect of a catnap doesn't come from sleeping, but from spending at least a couple of minutes in that weird twilight state that precedes sleep.

That doesn't quite solve your problem, so here are a few things that help me fall asleep quickly:

1) Try to plan your naps so that you avoid stimulating activities immediately beforehand. If you try to nap right after gaming/doomscrolling/social media, your mind will be abuzz and it'll take much longer.

2) Nap in darkness. If you can't turn off the lights, put on an eye mask or pull your hat over your eyes.

3) Stimulating sounds can pull you back into wakefulness. Mask them by listening to white noise.

4) If you have trouble quieting your mind when it's time to sleep, try doing a handful of Vipassana meditation sessions. I found the practice of observing and dismissing thoughts as they arise to be really helpful when trying to clear my mind and fall asleep.

5) Don't sleep where you play. If you watch TV, use social media, or do other stimulating stuff in bed, your mind may be expecting some sort of stimulation (like Pavlov's dog) when you get into bed, which can make it harder to sleep. Either quit doing that stuff in bed, or sleep somewhere that lacks the pavlovian baggage.


I could never nap. After I quit caffeine I could nap on command at any time of the day.

Also a nap doesn’t have to be a deep sleep. Just a period of short and deliberate rest for the mind.


One thing that seems to work well for me is to push myself into thinking highly random thoughts. I imagine some kind of boring scene from life. Then I change it up, add content, make it a bit weird. Then after 5-15 seconds of this, I switch to a different random scene. After 5-10 minutes of this, it becomes automatic and I drift into sleep.




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