Should you get out of bed when you can't sleep?

Yes, get out of bed if lying there has turned into a fight. Go somewhere dim, do something quiet, and come back to bed when you're sleepy. If you're drifting and comfortable, stay where you are. And if getting up isn't safe for you, there's a version you can do sitting up in bed, further down.

This is the best-known part of stimulus control, a short set of instructions from the 1970s that also includes a steady get-up time, few or no naps, and keeping the bed for sleep and sex. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's 2021 guideline suggests it for long-term insomnia, even without the rest of CBT-I. It's one of only three single techniques the guideline backs on their own, with relaxation and limiting time in bed. The evidence is thin, though. The guideline rates its eight small trials as low quality, and in the two that checked, more people who followed it no longer had insomnia by the end.

Why it helps

Lie awake in bed often enough, worrying or scrolling or willing yourself to sleep, and your brain starts to link bed with being awake. It's why some people doze off on the sofa and then wake right up the moment they get into bed.

Getting up, night after night, loosens that link, and coming back only when you're sleepy teaches your brain that bed is for sleep.

What about the 20-minute rule?

The 20-minute rule says to get up if you haven't fallen asleep after about 20 minutes. Some versions use 15 and call it the quarter-hour rule. We'd rather you didn't time it, because a timer tempts you to check the clock, and checking the clock stirs up worry and makes the night feel longer. Go by how it feels instead. Get up when you're frustrated, wide awake or arguing with yourself about sleep. If you're drowsy and comfortable, there's no need to move.

What to do while you're up

Go somewhere dim and warm and do something calm you don't mind stopping. A paper book, an audiobook or a podcast, a puzzle, folding laundry. It can be something you enjoy. A few sips of something warm and caffeine-free are fine. Skip bright lights, the work inbox, the news and scrolling.

A warm bed is hard to leave at 3am, especially for a cold room. So set the other room up before bed, with a night light on the way, a chair and a blanket, a low lamp and the book you'll read.

When to go back

Go back to bed when you're sleepy. Heavy eyes, nodding off, reading the same line twice. Worn out doesn't count, so wait for the heavy eyes. If it's no better back in bed, get up again. Some nights that'll be more than once.

The first few weeks

The first few nights can be hard. Getting up can feel like giving up on the night, and you might sleep a little less for a while. Keep your usual get-up time the next morning anyway. If this is going to help, it shows over weeks, so give it at least two before you judge it.

If you feel sleepy in the day, don't drive until it passes.

Doing it from bed

Stay in bed if you're at risk of falls, find it hard to get up, take a sleeping pill or anything else that can make you drowsy or unsteady at night, or have nowhere else to go. Sit up with a low light instead and read or listen to something until you're sleepy.

This version is called counter-control. It has been studied less and seemed to help a little less in early research, but it's the safer choice when getting up isn't. A small 2026 trial tried an in-bed version of the quarter-hour rule for people who find it hard to get up. By their own sleep diaries, people fell asleep faster with it, about as much as the group who got up, though overnight recordings didn't change for either.

How Goodmorrow coaches it

In the app it's the habit "Get up if bed stops feeling like rest." If waking in the night is what brings you in, it's usually the first one we pick. Its lesson comes in the first few days: "When bed turns into a fight, it's fine to get up." An hour before bed, a nudge says something like "Tonight, if bed turns into a fight, get up for a while. Come back when you're sleepy." The next day you mark whether you did it.

Goodmorrow is a wellness app, not a treatment. If poor sleep has gone on three or more nights a week for three months, or you snore loudly or doze off in the day without meaning to, see a doctor.