With all the talk about productivity, optimization and life-hacking these days, it’s easy to forget to optimize a little question that happens to be the foundation of productivity: how to get to sleep.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that without plenty of good sleep, all your other efforts will be wasted.

You know how it goes. After a full day racing from crisis to crisis, trying to keep WAAAY too many balls in the air. It’s finally time for bed, so you can get some much needed shuteye before that big pitch tomorrow. That’s when it strikes.

You lie there thinking. Did you remember the slides? Are they all done? What if there’s a mistake somewhere that you haven’t caught? Gosh, you really need some sales. You still have to pay the babysitter, and the mortgage is coming up soon. And on and on…

Your brain’s awake, so you’re awake!

Sleep is way too important to miss out on. You need it. You crave it. Your performance drops to pitiful levels if you don’t get enough.

People have written posts about the awful side effects of insomnia. They’ve written about bad habits that cause insomnia. They’ve even written 28 things people who can’t sleep will totally understand.

Once the blogosphere got all of that out of their system, we started trying to help solve the problem. So then we got specific yoga poses to cure insomnia. We got foods that can treat insomnia. We got the best herbs for treating insomnia, and home remedies to treat insomnia. We got 6 tips to zap insomnia, and who to make sleep on the couch (hint: it’s your phone). You might notice some overlap and rehashing.

Many of these things are useful, but it seems to me they aren’t enough. They don’t get to the root cause. For the record, neither will I. At least I’ll try to delve a little deeper, and offer a more comprehensive sleep plan.

That said, here are 18 ways to fall asleep more easily every night.

1. Exercise daily

Exercise has been said to improve sleep since Biblical times. More recently, in 1996, a paper published by researchers (Nalin A. Singh et. al.) concluded that resistance training improves sleep quality. (and lowers depression scores, too. Bonus!). Not all research articles agree that the sleep benefits of exercise are definitive, though. For example, Helen S. Driver and Sheila R Taylor concluded “The sleep-promoting efficacy of exercise in normal and clinical populations has yet to be established empirically.”

I thoroughly believe that regular exercise improves my sleep, with one exception. Working legs hard late in the day can bring on insomnia. My legs feel hot and restless after a hard squat session. Easy solution. Don’t train too late in the day. Leave yourself time to cool down nicely.

In any case, there are so many other benefits of regular exercise, you might as well do it, and claim the benefit of improved sleep as well.

2. Eat well

A 2012 review article by Katri Peuhkuri, Nora Sihvola, Riitta Korpela suggests that “emerging evidence confirms a link between diet and sleep. Overall, foods impacting the availability of tryptophan, as well as the synthesis of serotonin and melatonin, may be the most helpful in promoting sleep.”

Yet another case of scholarly research confirming ancient wisdom?

You might say so. Bring on the warm milk and turkey, I say!

Tove Hallböök, Johan Lundgren and Ingmar Rosén published a paper called “Ketogenic Diet Improves Sleep Quality in Children with Therapy-resistant Epilepsy.” The title is the main conclusion. They also showed reduced daytime sleeping (a problem for children with epilepsy), and reduced frequency and severity of seizures.

3. Don’t eat late

The Mayo clinic says “Don’t go to bed either hungry or stuffed. Your discomfort might keep you up.” Again, from personal and anecdotal experience, this just makes sense.

4. No caffeine after 2 PM

You drink coffee in the morning to give you a “get moving” jolt. You drink it to stay awake after lunch. You drink it instead of eating dessert after dinner. OK that was me.

It’s a stimulant. Of course it will keep you awake!

Even if you think it doesn’t contribute to your nighttime tossing and turning, it can’t be good for your quality of sleep.

Wikipedia has a lot to say about caffeine and presents plenty of references. I won’t repeat them here, but the key takeaway is that the level of caffeine in your blood peaks about 1-2 hours after ingestion. For most people, it then drops to 50% of that amount in about 3-7 hours and then 25% in about 6-14 hours.

If you’re pregnant, taking oral contraceptives, or taking fluvoxamine, it might take much, much longer for your body to clear it away. Stop drinking coffee, tea, etc by 2 PM. You’ll be much better off when bedtime rolls around.

5. No nicotine

Wikipedia has plenty to say about nicotine, too.

Yes, nicotine is a stimulant, too, so the same rules apply. The half life of nicotine, is 1-2 hours. Because it’s shorter than for caffeine, you can go later in the day with your smokes than I can with my coffee. It’s a terrible idea for a lot of other reasons, though.

In fact, just quit, OK?

I know it’s really hard, but I believe in you. If you can do it you can do anything right? You owe it to yourself and your kids. Be the superhero they have every right to believe you are.

6. No alcohol

What? Really? Yes, really. There is a big difference between falling asleep and passing out on the couch. It might make you unconscious, but the quality of sleep you get after drinking alcohol is not at all good.

Alcohol and Sleep I: Effects on Normal Sleep by Irshaad O. Ebrahim, Colin M. Shapiro, Adrian J. Williams and Peter B. Fenwick reviewed all of the known literature on the effects of alcohol consumption on sleep.

Alcohol may seem to be helping you to sleep, because it helps induce sleep. They concluded that overall it is more disruptive to sleep. Especially so in the second half of the night. It lowers the quality of your sleep. Just say no.

7. No clocks

I turn my bedside clock face down at night.

At first it was just a reaction to the unreasonably bright display. Lights in my bedroom annoy me.

Once I started turning it face down, though, I found another benefit. Many times in the past, if I woke up in the early morning, I’d have trouble getting back to sleep. I’d lie there checking the clock, mentally calculating how much sleep I’d be able to get if only I could fall asleep RIGHT NOW.

As you probably already know, this is a perfect recipe for sleeplessness. Now, if I have trouble falling asleep, or wake during the night, I actively avoid looking at clocks. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it sure beats knowing how little sleep you’re getting.

8. Sunlight in the morning

Research has shown that exposure to sunlight in the morning helps set your body clock.

Your eyes contain photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (pRCGs). These cells provide lighting information to different, non-visual parts of your brain. For example, the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). This region serves as the body’s master biological clock. Exposing your eyes to sunlight in the morning helps calibrate your body clock. Inadequate light exposure of your pRCGs has been implicated as aggravating insomnia, depression, and impaired cognition.

Get some sunlight in the morning.

9. Develop a ritual

My 2-year-old daughter has a bedtime ritual. It starts at 7:30 PM with a warm bath, washing her hair, and playing in the tub.

Most nights, I sing to her while she plays. Then I wrap her up in her favorite purple hoodie towel to dry off, then I get her into her pajamas. Next she watches a few minutes of TV, while I get her big brother into the bath. Then it’s time for a warm bottle, brushing teeth, and snuggle with her daddy. By 9 PM she’s falling asleep on my shoulder. She always wakes up when I put her down in bed. After that, though, it’s “Night, night, I love you” a kiss on the cheek and lights out.

This ritual plays out at my house every night. It never fails.

If it works for a toddler, it’ll work for you, too. Having a ritual sets the inevitability of a good night’s sleep in motion. It leaves you clean, relaxed, and ready to drift off. What you want is a ritual that eases the transition from busy day and a noisy mind, to relaxed and quiet.

10. Take a hot bath

I’ve never really understood the people who only shower in the morning. Who wants to go to bed still wearing the sweat and grime of the day?

Yes, a morning shower is great to get you up, and clean and energized for the day. A hot bath or shower at night washes away the day’s leftovers though. It leaves you clean (bonus for your spouse), relaxed, and gives you a temperature contrast.

What?

Some research has shown that a drop in body temperature helps you sleep. Raising your temperature just before bed allows it to drop as you go to bed. This improves sleep.

11. Keep it cool

This one goes with the hot bath. Keeping your bedroom cool and having enough blankets to keep you warm also improves sleep.

Researchers have done quite a few interesting studies on the relationship between ambient temperature, body temperature and sleep. One such study by Karacan I, Thornby JI, Anch AM, Williams RL, Perkins HM found “On the [high blanket temperature] night, subjects had less total sleep time, more frequent and longer awakenings, greater shifting among sleep stages, decreased amounts of stage 1 REM and stages 3 + 4, and delayed onset of deep sleep (stages 3 and 4).”

Keep it cool in the bedroom to get better sleep.

12. Keep it quiet

This is obvious, no? Noise that it periodic, like ticking clocks, dripping water, and unbalanced fans, tends to attract our mind’s attention. So does the sound of human speech. This is what you don’t want.

Anything that draws your conscious attention pulls you that much further from slumber

13. Make some noise

If you can’t make it really quite, a good strategy is to ADD some noise. Only the right kind of noise, though.

Ambient noise is still processed by the sleeper sensory functions, despite a non-conscious perception of their presence.

Give your auditory processing some cover by introducing white or pink noise. Think how soothing the sounds of rain, surf, or running water can be.

14. Banish interruptions

Turn your phone on silent, and then put it in a drawer in your bathroom.

I do this when I get home, and it helps keep my attention on my family during the even hours. It helps even more when emails, texts, etc come though during the wee hours.

Ignorance is bliss.

15. Brain dump

One of the major causes of sleepless nights, is worry.

Thinking about things that need doing. Worrying about what might go wrong. Remembering that thing you forgot to take care of, or whatever didn’t happen as planned during the day just passed.

These are the things that keep your monkey mind chattering, and that keeps you awake.

One really good way I’ve found to offload the worry is to write it down. Once I have a page filled with the stuff that was going through my mind, I can say to myself “Good job, and thanks for thinking of those things.”

They’re important, otherwise you wouldn’t be worried, right? Now that you’ve got them written down, you won’t forget them. So, you don’t have to keep them in mind anymore.

Once they’re committed to paper, you can let go of the worry, secure that it will get the attention it deserves TOMORROW (instead of right now).

16. Darkness at night

Keep your bedroom dark at night.

Get blackout curtains. Remove any electronics with lights. If you can’t convince yourself (or more likely, your spouse) to get them out of the room, at least cover the LEDs with black tape. Or throw a towel over them. Anything to make it actually dark in the room.

Quite a lot of research has shown that light exposure helps regulate our circadian rhythm. This has a huge influence on your ability to sleep when you want to. We’re programmed to sleep when it’s dark. Don’t try to buck millennia of evolution.

17. The trouble with paradoxical intention

Sounds like academic speak, right? Well it is.

What it means is that you must avoid making any effort to fall asleep. Conscious effort at anything engages the parts of your mind that work when you’re conscious. Conscious effort is the wrong thing to do when you’d prefer to be UN-conscious.

Worrying that you can’t sleep can keep you awake. Ascher, L. Michael; Efran, Jay S. suggested a cool way to use paradoxical intention to your advantage. They tried asking people who couldn’t fall asleep to stay awake as long as possible. What happened? They then fell asleep faster. Also, refer to “No clocks,” above.

18. Get up and try again

Beds are for sleeping and for sex. Nothing else. If you’re having trouble falling asleep, don’t just lie there in bed. You don’t want to train yourself to be awake in bed. It’s much better to get up. Go to the toilet, read in a chair for a few minutes, or have a glass of water or milk. Go back to bed once you feel sleepy again. As a child, we’d call it a “do over.” It works.

Getting enough good sleep is the single most important thing you can do to nurture your performance, your mood, and your health. Try these tips out for yourself, and you’ll soon be snoozing peacefully.

Have you tried any of these ideas yourself? Did they work for you? Is there something profound I’ve left out? Leave a comment to let me know, because the world needs your wisdom, too.