Guides

Habits

• Wake up at the same time every day, weekends tooOne get-up time, seven days a week, is one of the core rules of CBT-I. How to pick yours, and what to do the morning after a bad night.
• Should you get out of bed when you can't sleep?Yes, if lying there has turned into a fight. What the 20-minute rule gets right, what to do while you're up, and a sit-up-in-bed version for when getting up isn't safe.
• What time should you stop drinking coffee?At least nine hours before bed for a small coffee, longer for a big one. How long caffeine stays in your system, what it does to sleep, and how much is in a drink.
• What's a good wind-down routine before bed?About 20 minutes of the same calm things each night, somewhere that isn't your bed, with work put away first. Then which parts have actually been studied.
• Is it the blue light or the scrolling that keeps you up?An hour of screen light barely changed how fast people fell asleep in studies, while late texting went with worse sleep. We suggest screens away 30 minutes before bed.

At night

• Why you wake up at 3am, and how to get back to sleepAround 3am sleep is at its lightest, and a busy mind does the rest. What helps in the moment, what to do the next day, and when to see a doctor.
• How do I stop racing thoughts at night?Do your worrying earlier in the evening, on paper, and give your mind something absorbing to picture in bed. Pushing thoughts away tends to backfire.

Life situations

• How to adjust your sleep to daylight saving timeGet up at your usual time on the new clock from the first morning. The clocks go forward March 14, 2027 in the US and March 28 in the UK and Europe.
• Can't sleep after quitting alcoholSleep usually gets worse for a while after you stop drinking, and after years of heavy drinking it can take months to settle, even with no alcohol at all.
• Can't sleep after quitting weedSleep trouble after quitting weed usually starts within three days and is often the last withdrawal symptom to settle, sometimes taking a month or more.
• Why does perimenopause wake you up at night?Hot flashes break up sleep, and after enough nights the waking can carry on without them. What helps with each, and when to get checked for sleep apnea.
• Still can't sleep on CPAP?Between a third and a half of people with sleep apnea also have insomnia, and CPAP alone may not fix that. What helps with the mask, and when to ask about CBT-I.

Your options

• What is CBT-I?CBT-I is a short course that changes the habits and thoughts keeping insomnia going. Guidelines put it ahead of pills, and you can do it from a book.
• Where to get CBT-I for freeGuidelines put CBT-I first for long-term insomnia, but therapists who do it are scarce. Free apps and courses from the VA, Sleepio on the NHS, and books to borrow.
• A free sleep diary you can printA two-week sleep diary to print, using the questions from the Consensus Sleep Diary, with what to look for when the two weeks are up.
• Can ChatGPT read your sleep data?In the US, ChatGPT and Claude can both connect to Apple Health now. What a chatbot does well with your sleep data, where it trips up, and when a coached habit helps more.
• Do sleeping pills work long term?The evidence is thin, yet 85% of Z-drugs taken for sleep in a US survey had been used for six months or more. Come off one only with your prescriber.

Tools

• Caffeine cutoff calculatorPut in when you go to bed and what you drink, and get the latest time for caffeine and how much will be left in you by then. The times come from a 2023 research review.
• Sleep calculatorFor 7 to 9 hours of sleep before a 7am alarm, with 15 minutes to fall asleep, aim for bed between 9:45 and 11:45pm. Or put in your own times.