Sleep Hygiene
An evidence-informed sleep hygiene checklist to help you audit your current habits, choose two realistic changes, and track how your sleep quality responds.
What sleep hygiene is
Sleep hygiene is the set of daily habits and conditions that make good sleep more likely: when you get light and caffeine, how you wind down, and what your bed is used for. No single habit fixes sleep on its own, and sleep hygiene isn't a complete treatment for chronic insomnia. But stacking several small habits reliably tilts the odds toward falling asleep faster and waking less often. Use this worksheet to see which habits you already have, then commit to just two changes. Two consistent changes beat ten abandoned ones.
Habits for your day
Wake up at about the same time every day, including weekends. A steady wake time anchors your body clock more powerfully than a steady bedtime does. Get bright light, ideally outdoors, within an hour of waking, and get some movement during the day. Both strengthen your body's sense of when to be awake and when to wind down. Stop caffeine by early afternoon - it can disturb sleep for eight hours or more after your last cup. Keep naps short and before mid-afternoon, and go easy on evening alcohol; it may knock you out at first, but it fragments the second half of the night.
Habits for your night
Give yourself a wind-down hour before bed: dim the lights and switch to calm, low-effort activities. Put screens away for at least the last thirty minutes - both the light and the stimulation work against sleep. Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet, and reserve your bed for sleep and intimacy only. When your brain learns that bed means sleep, drowsiness starts to arrive on cue. If you've been lying awake for what feels like twenty minutes or more, get up and do something quiet in dim light until you feel sleepy again. Lying in bed frustrated only teaches your brain that bed is a place to be awake.
Your sleep this week
Rate your overall sleep quality over the past week. Come back and re-rate it after two weeks with your new habits.
Your habits audit
Check every habit you already do consistently - most days, not just occasionally. The unchecked items are your menu of possible changes.
Change one
From the unchecked items, pick the change that feels most doable. Make it specific: what will you do, and when?
Change two
Pick one more. Keep it small enough that you'd bet on yourself doing it for two weeks straight.
Reflect and plan
What did the audit show you about your current sleep habits? What is most likely to get in the way of your two changes, and how will you handle it this week?
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