Easing Into Falling To Sleep Faster

Baylor University has conducted a study that suggests that writing a to do list at bedtime may help people to fall to sleep quicker as published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology.

This study involved 57 students compared sleep patterns of participants who had taken 5 minutes to write down a list of forthcoming activities and duties with participants who recorded completed their completed tasks.

Most people cycle through a mental to do list in their heads at bedtime which can cause worry and effect sleep patterns. National Sleep Foundation estimates that up to 40% of Americans report difficulty falling to sleep at least a few times each month. This study investigates whether the act of writing down a to do list would counteract night time difficulties with falling to sleep with 2 hypotheses that the writing will offload the thought and decrease worry easing sleep or the writing would increase worry about tasks delaying sleep while writing completed tasks should not trigger worry. During the study the overnight polysomnography of sleep measurement was used to monitor the electrical brain activity levels of each individual participant using electrodes.

Participants were instructed to stay in the lab on a week night to avoid the weekend effects on bedtime, they were also expected to have uncompleted tasks to do for the following day. Participants were divided into 2 groups at random and were given 5 minute writing assignments to do before going to bed. One group wrote about tasks that they had completed over the previous few days, the other group wrote about everything that they needed to do on the next day or over the next few days. Participants were under a controlled environment with no access to any form of technology or homework, etc, and had a bedtime of 10:30PM.

The sample size needs to be larger for future studies, and needs to account for measure of personality, depression, and anxiety which are all thought to moderate the effects of writing on falling to sleep. Young healthy adults were recruited meaning the findings may not generalize with patients with insomnia.