Dr. Matt Walker

Maybe whatever it is that you do, just build it into your regimen.

You would never be driving down the road and then pull into your garage at the same 40 mile an hour speed.

You gradually decelerate and you come to a stop.

It's the same thing with sleep.

So you need to find some way to decelerate.

And we've spoken about methods already as to how to do that.

The next tip is a little quirky and funny.

Do not count sheep.

There's a great study from my colleague, Dr. Alison Harvey at UC Berkeley, and she put this to the test.

didn't make people fall asleep faster.

It made them take longer to fall asleep.

However, she did find an alternative.

If you are not into meditation or podcasts or sleep stories or whatever it is that you wish for, try taking yourself on a mental walk.

And it has to be a walk that you know very well.

So let's say that you walk your dog every day and you know there's a couple of walks that you take with your dog.

Do it in hyper detail.

So close your eyes, you go to the front door, you clip in the dog to the leash, you walk out, you go down the steps,

out to the driveway, then you take a right, but you always cross over and you look to the left and the right, because that's the place where traffic always comes.

You cross over and now you're walking up and there's that strange sort of set of garbage that's been outside of that house for a long time and you don't know why it hasn't been cleared.

And then you move.