Wind Down Routine: Foundational Sleep Hygiene

Most people, unfortunately, don’t have a consistent wind down routine, and this is one of the core reasons they have poor sleep. In the previous article, we discussed how consistent sleep and wake times give your circadian rhythm the predictability it needs to work with you rather than against you. You will have also hopefully calculated your proper bedtime, committed to your wake time, and perhaps you’re already noticing how much easier sleep becomes when your body knows what to expect.

But what often happens next is you’ve set your bedtime for 10:30pm, you’re committed to maintaining it, and at 10:25pm you look up from whatever you’ve been doing (work email, social media, an intense thriller series, etc.) and realise that bedtime is in five minutes, so you rush through brushing your teeth, jump into bed, and then lie there wondering why sleep won’t come despite your excellent intentions.

The problem isn’t your commitment or your schedule. The problem is that you’re asking your body to make an instantaneous transition from full engagement with the stimulating demands of modern life to the rest of sleep. You might as well ask a car travelling at seventy kilometres per hour to stop immediately without using the brakes. The momentum has to go somewhere.

A wind down routine is essential, and not optional like some people assume. It’s not just for people with sleep problems, it’s essential for anyone who wants to reliably access good sleep. Your wind down routine is the bridge between waking and sleeping, the deceleration that allows you to transition from the sympathetic arousal of your day to the parasympathetic calm required for deep, restorative rest.

This article will give you everything you need to build a wind down routine that actually works. Unfortunately, what people often think of for wind down stuff is actually just very generic advice about reading and taking baths. What you need is a comprehensive understanding of what’s happening physiologically during the transition to sleep, which activities genuinely support that transition, and how to create a personalised protocol that fits your life while maximising your chances of sleeping well.

The Science of Wind-Down: What Actually Needs to Happen

To understand why a wind down routine matters, you need to understand what your body is trying to accomplish in the hours before sleep. This isn’t just about feeling relaxed, although that’s part of it. There are specific physiological transitions that need to occur, and your evening activities either facilitate these transitions or actively work against them.

Parasympathetic activation is the most crucial shift. Your autonomic nervous system has two main branches: sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest). During your waking day, you’re operating primarily in sympathetic mode (alert, responsive, and ready for action). This state is characterised by increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, heightened cortisol, rapid breathing, and increased muscle tension. It’s adaptive for getting things done, responding to demands, and solving problems.

But you cannot sleep from sympathetic activation. Sleep requires a shift to parasympathetic dominance, where heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, breathing deepens, muscles relax, and the body’s resources shift from mobilisation to restoration. This shift doesn’t happen automatically just because you’ve decided it’s bedtime. It requires deliberate downregulation, and it takes time. For most people, it typically takes thirty to ninety minutes, depending on how activated you were and how effective your wind-down activities are.

Cortisol reduction is closely related. Cortisol (often called the stress hormone, even though it serves many functions beyond stress response) follows a natural circadian pattern. It’s highest in the morning (particularly within the first thirty to sixty minutes after waking) and gradually declines throughout the day, reaching its lowest levels in the evening and first half of the night. This decline isn’t just correlational with sleep; it’s causal. High cortisol actively interferes with sleep initiation and, when elevated at the wrong times, can disrupt sleep architecture and prevent deep sleep.

The problem is that modern evening activities often spike cortisol when it should be declining. Work stress, financial worries, conflict with your partner, watching news about disasters or injustice, scrolling social media and encountering content that provokes anger or anxiety, intense exercise, etc. All of these raise cortisol. If you engage in these activities in the hours before bed, you’re chemically preventing the transition to sleep, even if you’re unaware of it.

Temperature regulation plays a critical but often misunderstood role. Your core body temperature follows a circadian rhythm, typically peaking in the late afternoon or early evening and declining throughout the night, reaching its lowest point around 4-5am. This temperature decline isn’t just something that happens during sleep; it’s actually one of the triggers for sleep onset. Your body needs to drop its core temperature by approximately 1-2 degrees Celsius to initiate sleep, and anything that prevents this drop makes falling asleep difficult.

This is why hot bedrooms make sleep harder, why cooling the body through various methods can promote sleep, and why, counterintuitively, a warm bath or shower before bed can actually help you sleep. When you immerse yourself in hot water, your core temperature rises. But when you get out, your body activates cooling mechanisms (peripheral blood flow increases, and you may even sweat slightly) and your core temperature drops below where it started. Timing this drop to coincide with your bedtime creates optimal conditions for sleep onset.

Melatonin secretion is the final key piece. Melatonin is often called the sleep hormone, though technically it’s more accurate to say it’s the darkness hormone, because it signals that it’s nighttime and time for sleep, but it doesn’t directly cause sleep the way a sedative would. In people with healthy circadian rhythms, melatonin begins rising about two hours before habitual bedtime, increases sharply in the hour before bed, peaks in the middle of the night, and declines toward morning.

This rise isn’t automatic. It’s triggered by the absence of light, particularly the absence of short-wavelength (blue) light that your brain interprets as daylight. When you expose yourself to bright light (especially from screens) in the evening hours, you suppress melatonin secretion and delay its rise. This shifts your entire circadian rhythm later, making you feel alert when you should be getting sleepy and making it difficult to fall asleep at your intended bedtime.

Your wind down routine needs to facilitate all of these transitions: shifting from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation, allowing cortisol to decline naturally, enabling core temperature to drop, and protecting the evening rise in melatonin. Activities that support these transitions belong in your wind-down period. Activities that interfere with them need to be completed earlier in the evening or avoided entirely.

The Two-Hour Buffer: Why Wind-Down Takes Time

Most people underestimate how much runway they need for the transition to sleep. The typical pattern is for people to stay fully engaged in stimulating activities until minutes before bedtime, and then expect their body to pivot immediately into sleep mode. It doesn’t work, which is why I recommend a two-hour buffer before your target bedtime. This is time specifically allocated to wind-down activities that progressively reduce arousal.

Two hours might sound excessive. It’s not. You see, digestion of a substantial meal takes two to four hours, and lying down with a full stomach can cause acid reflux and discomfort that interferes with sleep, along with the fact that it is like trying to turn the machinery off while it is still running. Intense exercise elevates core temperature and cortisol for one to three hours afterwards. Bright light exposure suppresses melatonin for thirty to sixty minutes after the exposure ends. A stressful work email can spike cortisol and create rumination that persists for an hour or more.

If you eat dinner at 8pm and want to be asleep by 10:30pm, you’re barely giving your body time to digest. If you exercise at 8:30pm or work until 9pm or watch an intense film until 10pm, you’re creating conditions that directly oppose sleep, while expecting sleep to happen anyway. The two-hour buffer gives you actual time to transition.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend two hours lying in the dark doing breathing exercises. It means the two hours before bed should follow an intensity gradient: moving from activities that are moderately stimulating but necessary (finishing dinner, perhaps some light household tasks, maybe a calm conversation with your partner) through progressively calmer activities (reading, stretching, journaling, etc.) to the final thirty minutes of your routine, which should be as close to sleep-like as possible while still being awake.

Think of it as a dimmer switch rather than an on-off toggle. At the beginning of your two-hour window (say 8:30pm for a 10:30pm bedtime), you might still be finishing dinner or having a conversation. By 9pm, you’ve moved to quieter activities. By 9:30pm, you’re actively engaged in deliberate wind-down practices. By 10pm, you’re in the final phase of your routine, and by 10:30pm when you get into bed, your body has had ample time to prepare for sleep.

Within this two-hour window, certain activities should be avoided entirely because they’re incompatible with the physiological transitions you’re trying to facilitate. This list will feel restrictive. It might conflict with how you currently spend your evenings. But if sleep is actually a priority and not just something you say matters, but something you’re willing to change your behaviour for, then these boundaries are non-negotiable.

Things To Avoid In The Two Hours Before Bed:

Work and email, unless there’s a genuine emergency. Even if the work itself isn’t stressful, the context of work activates the mental patterns of problem-solving, responsibility, and incomplete tasks that keep your mind active when it should be quieting. Every email you read before bed is potentially another thread your brain will try to resolve when you should be sleeping.

Stressful conversations or conflicts. If you need to have a difficult conversation with your partner, do it earlier in the evening. Starting an argument at 9:30pm doesn’t just cost you sleep tonight; it actually damages your relationship by ensuring both of you engage with difficult topics when you’re already tired and less capable of emotional regulation.

News consumption, particularly news about disasters, crimes, politics, or anything that provokes strong emotional reactions. The news is designed to capture attention through emotional arousal, which is precisely what you’re trying to avoid before sleep. You’re not going to solve climate change or geopolitical conflicts tonight, and learning about them at 9pm just ensures you lie in bed feeling worried and helpless.

Social media scrolling. This deserves special mention because it’s so ubiquitous and people often don’t recognise how stimulating it is. Social media provides unpredictable rewards (likes, comments, interesting content) on a variable schedule, which is precisely the pattern that creates compulsive engagement. It also exposes you to bright light, keeps your mind active with fragmented attention, and frequently surfaces content that provokes emotional reactions. Scrolling before bed is training your brain to stay alert when it should be calming down.

Action films, thrillers, horror, intense dramas, or anything that creates arousal through suspense, violence, or emotional intensity. Entertainment that raises your heart rate, makes you feel anxious, or requires intense focus is sympathetic activation by design. That’s what makes it engaging, but it’s incompatible with sleep preparation.

Intense exercise. Exercise earlier in the day is one of the most powerful sleep-promoting interventions available. Exercise in the two hours before bed raises core temperature, elevates cortisol and adrenaline, and creates a state of arousal that can take hours to resolve. If you can only exercise in the evening, finish by 7 or 8pm at the latest, not 9pm.

Heavy mental work, complex problem-solving, planning, or anything that requires significant cognitive effort. This includes work projects, but also things like detailed financial planning, researching major purchases, or trying to solve complicated logistical problems. Your brain needs to shift out of active problem-solving mode into a more passive, receptive state.

Bills and finances, which combine cognitive effort with potential stress. Even if your finances are fine, engaging with them activates the mental patterns of assessment and concern that work against wind-down.

Competitive video games or anything else that creates performance pressure and emotional investment in outcomes. Even “relaxing” video games often require more focus and create more arousal than people realise.

You might read this list and think, “What am I supposed to do for two hours if I can’t do any of that?” The answer is: activities that actually support the transition to sleep. 

Wind-Down Activities That Actually Work

The goal of wind-down activities is threefold: reduce sympathetic arousal, facilitate the physiological transitions that prepare your body for sleep, and provide enough engagement that you’re not bored and tempted to break your routine for something more stimulating. The activities need to be genuinely calming but not so boring that they feel like punishment.

Reading physical books is perhaps the most universally effective wind-down activity. Reading engages your mind enough to prevent rumination, while being controllable in a way that screens aren’t. You decide when to stop, you’re not being fed algorithmically selected content designed to keep you engaged. Fiction often works better than non-fiction because it pulls you into a narrative that displaces your own thoughts, though some people find non-fiction relaxing if it’s on topics they find interesting but not too stimulating.

We ideally want to do this with physical books, not screens. E-readers with e-ink displays (like older Kindles that don’t emit light) are acceptable. But tablets and phones emit blue-rich light directly into your eyes and provide easy access to other apps and notifications that can derail your routine. If you must read on a screen, use night shift mode or blue light filtering, dim the screen as much as possible, and use an app that blocks everything except your reading app.

Light stretching or gentle yoga addresses the physical tension many people hold without creating the arousal of intense exercise. The key is “light”; this isn’t a workout, it’s gentle movement focused on releasing tension and connecting with your body. Yin yoga, restorative yoga, or simple stretching sequences of five to fifteen minutes can be remarkably effective at shifting your nervous system toward parasympathetic activation.

Focus on breathing while you stretch. Long exhales activate the vagus nerve and promote parasympathetic tone. Stretching should feel releasing, not effortful. You’re not trying to increase flexibility or get a training effect; you’re using gentle movement as a bridge between the activity of your day and the stillness of sleep.

Gentle foam rolling or self-massage works similarly, providing just enough physical engagement to be absorbing while releasing muscular tension. Rolling major muscle groups (quads, hamstrings, back) for ten to fifteen minutes can feel like a kind of reset button, particularly if your day involved a lot of sitting or physical work.

Meditation and mindfulness practices directly target the mental component of wind-down. Formal meditation isn’t necessary, and even five to ten minutes of simply sitting quietly, perhaps focusing on your breath or doing a body scan, can significantly reduce arousal and racing thoughts. Apps like Insight Timer, Calm, or Headspace provide guided meditations specifically designed for sleep preparation, which can be helpful if you’re new to meditation or find it difficult to practice without structure.

The goal isn’t to achieve some transcendent state or empty your mind completely. It’s to practice shifting from engagement with thoughts to observation of thoughts, creating some distance between yourself and the mental activity that might otherwise keep you awake. Even “unsuccessful” meditation, where your mind wanders constantly, is still teaching your nervous system to downregulate.

Breathwork exercises deserve special attention because they’re perhaps the fastest and most reliable way to shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation. Your breathing pattern both reflects and influences your nervous system state. Rapid, shallow, chest breathing signals threat and maintains arousal. Slow, deep, diaphragmatic breathing signals safety and promotes calm. By consciously controlling your breath, you can directly influence your autonomic state.

We’ll explore specific protocols in depth shortly, but the general principle is: slow down your breathing, emphasise the exhale, and breathe through your nose rather than your mouth. Even without formal techniques, simply paying attention to your breath and allowing it to slow naturally for five minutes can make a noticeable difference.

Journaling is particularly effective for the mental component of sleep preparation because it provides a structured way to process thoughts and offload cognitive burden. Many people lie in bed with their mind racing through tomorrow’s tasks, unresolved concerns, or reflections on the day. Journaling gives those thoughts somewhere to go besides your attempt to sleep.

Different journaling approaches serve different needs. Brain dump journaling, where you simply write whatever’s on your mind without structure, helps if you have mental clutter. Tomorrow’s to-do list helps if you’re worried about forgetting things or feel overwhelmed by upcoming demands. Gratitude practice helps if you’re prone to anxiety or negative thought patterns. We’ll explore these in detail shortly.

Listening to calming music can create an acoustic environment that supports wind-down, particularly if you live in a noisy environment or have difficulty quieting your mind. The key is “calming”. This means slow tempo, minimal rhythmic complexity, and no jarring changes in volume or intensity. Classical music, ambient music, nature sounds, or white/brown noise can work. High-energy music, even if you enjoy it, is counterproductive before bed.

Aromatherapy, particularly lavender, has modest evidence for promoting sleep. The mechanism isn’t entirely clear, but lavender appears to have mild sedative effects and may reduce anxiety. If you find certain scents calming, incorporating them into your routine can be a helpful cue that sleep is approaching. Use essential oil diffusers or pillow sprays rather than candles, as they present a fire risk if you fall asleep, and they also produce too much CO2.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups throughout your body, typically starting with your feet and moving upward. The practice helps you notice and release tension you might not be consciously aware of while also providing a structured focus that prevents mind-wandering. Scripts for progressive muscle relaxation are widely available online or through meditation apps.

Guided sleep meditations combine several elements (relaxation, breathing, imagery) in an audio format that you follow passively. These can be particularly helpful if you struggle to maintain focus during unguided practices or if your mind tends to race when left to its own devices. Many people find these so effective that they become a non-negotiable part of their routine.

Gentle hobbies like knitting, drawing, simple puzzles, or other hands-on activities that are engaging but not mentally demanding can work well for some people. The key is that they’re genuinely relaxing for you and don’t create performance pressure or frustration. If your puzzle hobby makes you competitive about completion time, it’s not serving wind-down purposes.

Light household tasks like tidying, preparing tomorrow’s lunch, or laying out tomorrow’s clothes can serve double duty here, as they’re useful and they can be calming if approached with the right mindset. The key is that they’re routine, don’t require difficult decisions, and create a sense of readiness for tomorrow that reduces anxiety. They shouldn’t be rushed or stressful.

Gentle conversation with your partner or family can be a lovely part of wind-down, provided the conversation stays light and doesn’t venture into problems, conflicts, or stressful topics. Sharing highlights from your day, discussing something interesting you learned, or simply enjoying each other’s company while doing your respective wind-down activities can strengthen relationships while supporting sleep preparation.

The key across all these activities is that they’re genuinely calming for you. Don’t include something in your wind down routine just because it’s “supposed” to help if it actually makes you feel more agitated. Some people hate meditation. Some find stretching boring. Some find journaling stressful because they don’t know what to write. Your routine should include activities you actually find calming, not activities you think you should find calming.

Creating Your Personal Protocol

The framework I recommend for most people is to choose three to five wind-down activities from the list above, sequence them intentionally, and practice them consistently in roughly the same order every night. Consistency is what allows the routine to become a signal. Your brain learns that this sequence of activities precedes sleep, and eventually, just starting the routine begins to trigger the physiological changes that prepare you for sleep.

Start by identifying what you genuinely need. If you carry a lot of physical tension from your day, include stretching or foam rolling. If your mind races with unfinished tasks, include journaling. If you’re generally stressed and activated, prioritise breathing exercises or meditation. If you struggle to disengage from the stimulation of screens, make reading your core activity.

Then sequence them in order of decreasing activity. You might start your two-hour wind-down window with dinner cleanup and preparing tomorrow’s lunch (light household tasks, fairly active), move to twenty minutes of reading (moderately engaging), then ten minutes of stretching (physical but calming), then five minutes of breathing exercises (minimal external engagement), and finally your basic bedtime routine of shower, skincare, and tooth brushing before getting into bed.

Time allocation matters. Don’t try to fit ten different activities into thirty minutes, as you’ll feel rushed and stressed. Better to do three things well with enough time to actually engage with them than to race through six activities while mentally checking the clock. A realistic timeline might look like:

8:30-9:00pm: Finish dinner, clean kitchen, prepare tomorrow’s lunch 

9:00-9:30pm: Reading 

9:30-9:45pm: Stretching or foam rolling 

9:45-9:55pm: Journaling or breathing exercises 

9:55-10:20pm: Shower, skincare, brush teeth 

10:20-10:30pm: Final preparation (set alarm, put phone outside bedroom, etc.) 

10:30pm: In bed, lights off

This gives you two full hours of progressively calming activity with realistic time allocations that don’t require rushing. Adjust the timing based on your bedtime, but maintain the principle of gradual wind-down rather than trying to do everything in the final thirty minutes.

Consistency and ritual are what transform a routine into a signal. Your brain is a pattern-recognition machine, and when you repeat the same sequence night after night, it begins anticipating what comes next. Eventually, just starting your wind down routine begins shifting your physiology toward sleep. This is basic Pavlovian conditioning applied to sleep preparation.

This means maintaining your routine even when you don’t feel like it, even when you’re not particularly tired, even on nights when you’d rather stay up. The routine is training your nervous system, and training requires repetition. Missing nights here and there won’t destroy your progress, but if you only do your wind-down routine when you remember or when you feel like it, you’ll never build the conditioned response that makes it powerful.

Family considerations can complicate wind-down routines, particularly if you have young children or a partner with a different schedule. The ideal solution is coordinating family wind-down time, so everyone starts quieting down together, children go through their bedtime routines, and then adults have time for their own routines. This isn’t always possible, but it’s worth working toward because it creates household rhythms that benefit everyone.

If you have a partner who keeps a later schedule, you’ll need to negotiate boundaries around noise, light, and disruption. Maybe they use headphones after your wind-down begins. Maybe they stay in a different room until they’re ready for bed. Maybe you use earplugs or a white noise machine to buffer against disruption. The conversation needs to happen explicitly rather than allowing unspoken resentment to build.

Flexibility within structure is the final key. Your routine should be consistent enough to be a reliable signal but flexible enough to accommodate reality. If you normally read for thirty minutes but tonight you’re particularly tired, fifteen minutes is fine. If you normally journal but tonight nothing’s coming, skip it rather than forcing it. If unexpected guests or a family emergency mean that tonight’s routine is completely derailed, that’s life, just return to your normal routine tomorrow.

The structure is there to serve you, not constrain you. The goal is building a sustainable practice that you can maintain for years, not creating a rigid system that you abandon the first time life gets complicated.

Now, I do just want to touch on some of the most potent tools you can use as part of your wind down routine. Each of these tackle winding down from different directions, and thus, when they are combined together, they create a very potent effect.

The Warm Shower or Bath Method

The warm shower or bath before bed deserves special attention because it’s one of the most effective and underutilised sleep tools available, but only if you understand the mechanism and timing.

As mentioned earlier, your core body temperature needs to drop to initiate sleep. When you immerse yourself in hot water (a bath of around 40-43°C / 104-109°F), your core temperature rises. Your body responds by activating cooling mechanisms: blood flow to your extremities increases dramatically, you begin sweating lightly, and when you get out of the bath, evaporative cooling from your skin surface pulls heat away from your core.

The result is that your core temperature drops below its pre-bath level, which is exactly what you need for sleep onset. But the timing matters enormously. If you take your bath or shower immediately before getting into bed, your core temperature is still elevated, and you’ll feel too warm to sleep comfortably. If you do it too early, the temperature-lowering effect has worn off by bedtime.

The sweet spot is sixty to ninety minutes before your target bedtime. So if you’re aiming to be asleep by 10:30pm, take your shower or bath around 9-9:30pm. This gives your core temperature time to drop optimally as you approach bedtime.

The water should be warm to hot, but not so hot that it’s uncomfortable or raises your core temperature excessively. Around 40°C / 104°F is ideal, as this is warm enough to feel relaxing but not so hot that you emerge overheated and uncomfortable. Stay in for at least fifteen to twenty minutes if it’s a bath, longer if you find it genuinely relaxing. With a shower, five to ten minutes is usually sufficient if the water is warm enough.

After you get out, don’t immediately bundle up in heavy clothing or blankets. You want to allow the cooling process to work. A lightweight robe or comfortable pyjamas in a cool bedroom is ideal. Your extremities (hands and feet) should feel warm because blood flow has increased to dissipate heat, but your core should be cooling. This is the temperature state that promotes sleep onset.

What about cold showers or baths? Cold exposure has various health benefits and is popular in some wellness circles, but it’s generally counterproductive before bed. When you expose yourself to cold water, your body activates thermogenesis (heat production) to maintain core temperature. Your metabolic rate increases, you may shiver, and when you get out, your body continues producing heat for some time afterwards. This raises core temperature when you need it to drop, and it activates your sympathetic nervous system when you’re trying to shift to parasympathetic. Cold exposure is better suited to morning routines when you want increased alertness and arousal.

Sauna use can work similarly to hot baths, but with some important considerations. Traditional sauna or infrared sauna sessions raise core temperature significantly and can be deeply relaxing, but they also dehydrate you if you sweat heavily, and dehydration interferes with sleep. If you use a sauna as part of your wind-down routine:

• Keep sessions to fifteen to twenty minutes maximum
• Do it sixty to ninety minutes before bedtime, not immediately before
• Rehydrate thoroughly afterward but stop drinking at least thirty to sixty minutes before bed so you’re not waking to urinate
• Cool down gradually after sauna (e.g. don’t jump into a cold shower or pool)
• Listen to your body; if you feel overstimulated or energised rather than relaxed, a sauna might not be optimal for your evening routine

Some people find the heat and quiet of a sauna meditative and profoundly relaxing. Others find it too activating or uncomfortable. As with all wind-down activities, the question is whether it genuinely calms you, not whether it’s theoretically supposed to help.

The physical sensation of warmth also has psychological associations with safety and comfort that can support wind-down independent of the temperature mechanism. A warm bath or shower can feel like a boundary between your day and your evening, a ritual cleansing that marks the transition. This psychological component shouldn’t be dismissed, and if you find the warm water soothing beyond the physiological effects, that’s valuable in itself.

The Journaling Practice

Journaling before bed serves several functions, and understanding what you’re trying to accomplish helps you choose the right approach for your needs. Let’s explore the main techniques in detail.

Brain dump journaling is exactly what it sounds like: opening your notebook and writing whatever’s on your mind without structure, editing, or judgment. The goal is cognitive offloading. You are just getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper so they stop circulating through your consciousness. This is particularly effective if you find yourself lying in bed with your mind jumping from topic to topic, unable to settle.

The practice is straightforward. All you really have to do is set a timer for five to ten minutes. Write continuously without stopping to think about what you’re writing. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or coherence. You’re not writing for an audience; you’re not even writing for your future self to read. You’re simply externalising the mental noise. When the timer ends, close the journal without rereading what you wrote. The act of writing is what matters, not the content.

Many people find that after five minutes of brain dump, their mind feels clearer and quieter. The thoughts haven’t disappeared, but they’ve been acknowledged and released rather than suppressed. This can be remarkably effective for reducing the mental chatter that interferes with sleep onset.

Tomorrow’s to-do list addresses a specific type of pre-sleep anxiety: the fear of forgetting important tasks or feeling overwhelmed by upcoming demands. When you lie in bed mentally rehearsing everything you need to do tomorrow, you’re keeping your prefrontal cortex active in planning mode when it should be disengaging. Writing the list transfers that cognitive burden to external storage.

The practice, again, is straightforward enough. Before bed, write a simple list of the main tasks or commitments you have tomorrow. Be specific but not exhaustively detailed. “Prepare client presentation”, not “Create slides 1-15, rehearse talk, print handouts, test video links.” The goal is capturing everything so you can trust that nothing important is forgotten, not creating anxiety about the volume of work.

Some people also find it helpful to identify the top three priorities for tomorrow. This prevents you from lying in bed trying to mentally figure out what you should tackle first. You’ve already made that decision, so your mind can rest.

Close the journal and, crucially, make a conscious decision to not think about tomorrow’s tasks until tomorrow. You’ve captured everything. It’s handled. There’s nothing more to be done tonight, and worrying about it serves no purpose. This mental boundary of “I’ve written it down, now I’m done thinking about it” is what makes the practice effective.

Gratitude practice serves a different function: shifting your mental focus from problems and stresses to positive aspects of your life. This isn’t about toxic positivity or ignoring difficulties. It’s about counterbalancing the brain’s natural negativity bias, which tends to focus on threats, problems, and what’s wrong rather than what’s going well.

The practice: Write three to five things you’re grateful for from your day. They don’t need to be major, and in fact, noticing small positive moments is part of the point. “Good conversation with my colleague.” “Sunshine during my lunch walk.” “Dinner turned out well.” “My child laughed at my terrible joke.” The practice trains your brain to notice and encode positive experiences rather than just cataloguing problems.

Research on gratitude journaling shows benefits beyond sleep: reduced depression and anxiety, improved relationships, and enhanced wellbeing. But for sleep specifically, it helps because it reduces rumination on problems and creates a positive emotional tone as you approach sleep. You’re going to bed with your mind focused on what’s good in your life rather than what’s concerning or frustrating.

The worry window concept is useful if you have specific anxieties or problems that tend to surface at bedtime. Rather than trying to suppress worries (which paradoxically makes them more intrusive), you allocate specific time to worry deliberately. But just not right before bed.

The practice: Earlier in your evening (say 7 or 8pm), set aside fifteen to twenty minutes as your “worry time.” During this period, write about whatever’s concerning you. Be specific. Explore the worst-case scenarios. Consider what you can control and what you can’t. This isn’t about solving everything; it’s about acknowledging concerns fully so they don’t feel pushed down.

Then, when worries surface later (including when you’re in bed), you can consciously note “I already gave that attention during worry time. I’m not going to think about it now.” You’re not suppressing the worry (which tends to make it stronger); you’re deferring it to the time you’ve allocated. Over time, your brain learns that worries will get attention, just not at bedtime.

This technique works because it respects the valid concern while enforcing boundaries around when you engage with it. Your worries aren’t dismissed; they’re scheduled. This reduces the urgency that makes them intrusive at night.

Cognitive offloading is the general principle underlying all these journaling practices: your brain doesn’t need to keep actively holding information if it trusts that information is stored reliably elsewhere. When you write down tomorrow’s tasks, you’re telling your brain, “This is handled. You don’t need to keep reminding me.” When you write your thoughts in a brain dump, you’re saying, “I’ve acknowledged this. We can let it go for now.”

But this only works if you actually trust the external system. If you write a to-do list but don’t actually look at it tomorrow, your brain learns that writing things down doesn’t reliably offload them, and it will keep bothering you at night. The journaling practice needs to be paired with actually using what you’ve written (i.e. checking your to-do list in the morning). The external system earns trust through reliability.

Templates and prompts can be helpful if you find blank pages intimidating or don’t know what to write. Simple structures like:

Evening Reflection

• Three good things from today:
• Main challenge today and what I learned:
• Three priorities for tomorrow:
• Current energy level (1-10):
• What I’m grateful for:

Or even simpler:

• Today was [one word]
• Tomorrow I need to:
• Right now I’m feeling:

The structure provides enough guidance that you don’t waste mental energy deciding what to write, but not so much structure that it feels like homework. Over time, you might find you don’t need prompts anymore, and the practice becomes more intuitive and natural. But prompts can help establish the habit initially.

The Breathing Practice

Breathing exercises are perhaps the most underutilised and most immediately effective wind-down tool available. Unlike other interventions that take time to show effects, breathwork can shift your nervous system state within minutes. Let’s explore the main protocols and understand why they work.

4-7-8 breathing, developed by Dr. Andrew Weil, is specifically designed for relaxation and sleep. The pattern is straightforward, and all you do is inhale through your nose for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts, and then exhale through your mouth for 8 counts. The extended hold and even longer exhale activate your parasympathetic nervous system strongly.

It works because the exhale activates the vagus nerve, which runs from your brainstem to your abdomen and is the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. Long exhales send a strong signal to your nervous system that you’re safe and can relax. The breath hold allows oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to shift slightly, which has a calming effect. The rhythmic pattern gives your mind something to focus on, preventing rumination.

I would recommend that you start with four cycles (one cycle = one full 4-7-8 breath). As you become more comfortable, increase to eight cycles. Do this sitting up initially, not lying in bed, because it’s surprisingly powerful and you might fall asleep mid-practice if you’re already lying down. Once you’ve completed your cycles, notice how your body feels. Typically, your heart rate has slowed, your muscles have relaxed, and your mind has quieted.

Box breathing (also called square breathing) is simpler: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. Repeat. The symmetry is easy to remember, and the equal timing of all four phases creates a balanced nervous system state.

This breathing pattern works because it reduces the variability in your breathing pattern, which calms your nervous system. The holds both after inhale and after exhale help normalise carbon dioxide levels in your blood, which tends to be depleted if you’ve been breathing shallowly or rapidly from stress. The 4-4-4-4 pattern is slow enough to be calming but not so slow that it creates air hunger or discomfort for most people.

I generally recommend that you start with five minutes of box breathing. You can extend to ten minutes if you find it particularly effective. This is a good foundational practice if you’re new to breathwork because the pattern is simple and the equal timing makes it easy to track.

Coherent breathing (also called resonance breathing) involves breathing at a rate of approximately five to six breaths per minute, specifically, at five-second inhales and five-second exhales, or six-second inhales and six-second exhales. This rate does need to be personalised to your unique biology, but that is a much longer discussion than we can have here. This resonant rate appears to optimise heart rate variability and create a state of physiological coherence where your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure rhythms synchronise.

This breathing rate engages both your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems optimally, creating a balanced autonomic state. It maximises heart rate variability (the variation in time between heartbeats), which is associated with resilience, health, and good autonomic regulation. While other techniques emphasise parasympathetic activation, coherent breathing creates balance rather than pushing hard toward relaxation. For some people, this balanced state is more comfortable and sustainable than the deep relaxation of 4-7-8 breathing.

Practice: Set a timer for ten to twenty minutes. Breathe in for five to six seconds, out for five to six seconds, continuously without holds. Your breathing should feel natural, not forced. You can use a breathing pacer app (many are free) that provides visual or auditory cues for the timing. This practice is particularly good if you’re doing wind-down activities like reading or gentle stretching while you breathe, and you can maintain coherent breathing in the background without needing intense focus.

The physiological sigh is a rapid technique for immediate stress reduction, often discussed by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. The pattern is that you do a double inhale through the nose (one large inhale, then, without exhaling, another inhale to fully fill the lungs), followed by a long, extended exhale through the mouth.

The double inhale re-expands the alveoli (air sacs in your lungs) that have collapsed slightly during normal breathing and during stress. This increases oxygen uptake. The long exhale triggers the vagus nerve and shifts you quickly toward parasympathetic activation. This pattern also naturally occurs when we cry or sigh in relief, so your body already knows this pattern for releasing stress.

One to three physiological sighs can shift your state within seconds. This isn’t meant to be a sustained practice but rather a quick intervention when you notice acute stress or tension during your wind-down. If you find yourself getting frustrated while trying to settle for sleep, do two or three physiological sighs. You’ll often notice immediate relief.

How these work physiologically: All of these techniques leverage your body’s breath-nervous system connection. Your breathing pattern affects your autonomic nervous system state, and your autonomic state affects your breathing. This creates a loop: stress leads to rapid, shallow breathing, which signals your body that you’re under threat, which maintains stress. But you can intervene in this loop by consciously controlling your breathing, which shifts your nervous system, which then maintains the calmer breathing pattern even when you’re not consciously controlling it.

Slow breathing, particularly when you emphasise the exhale, increases heart rate variability (the variation in time between heartbeats), which is a marker of autonomic flexibility and resilience. It increases parasympathetic tone and decreases sympathetic activity. It shifts your brainwave patterns toward slower, calmer frequencies. It can even shift your brain’s default mode network activity (the network active during mind-wandering and rumination) toward calmer, less anxious patterns.

The beauty of breathwork is that it’s always available. You don’t need equipment, apps, or particular circumstances. You can do breathing exercises anywhere, anytime, for as long or as little as you need. For many people, five to ten minutes of intentional breathing becomes the cornerstone of their wind down routine because it reliably shifts their state in a way nothing else does.

Troubleshooting Your Wind-Down Routine

Even with understanding and commitment, you’ll encounter obstacles. So, let’s walk through the most common issues I have seen with my clients when working on their wind down routine, and see if some of the practical solutions I have used can help you. 

“I don’t have time for all this.” This is the most frequent objection, and it usually isn’t literally true. What’s actually true is that you haven’t made wind-down time a priority relative to other evening activities, which is a choice you’re making even if it doesn’t feel like one.

Look at what you actually do in the two hours before your current bedtime. For most people, it’s some combination of screens (social media, streaming, news), possibly work, perhaps chores or household tasks, maybe time with family. Very little of this is truly non-negotiable or serving you in meaningful ways.

If you currently go to bed at midnight and want to implement a wind-down routine with a 10:30pm target bedtime, you’re not finding ninety minutes of new time—you’re reallocating the ninety minutes from 9pm to 10:30pm away from whatever you currently do toward wind-down activities. What are you actually doing during those ninety minutes now? Is it truly more valuable than good sleep?

For most people, the answer is no. They’re scrolling mindlessly, watching shows they’re not even particularly enjoying, or working on tasks that could happen at different times. The time exists. The question is whether you’re willing to use it differently.

Start small if the full routine feels overwhelming. Begin with just fifteen minutes of wind-down activity, usually reading and/or breathing exercises are what most people start with. Once that’s established, expand to thirty minutes. Then forty-five. You don’t need to implement the perfect two-hour routine immediately. But you do need to start actually doing something rather than continuing to do nothing while wishing you slept better.

“I’m not tired at bedtime.” If you consistently don’t feel sleepy at your target bedtime despite implementing a wind-down routine, several factors might be at play.

First, you might not have been awake long enough. If you wake at 9am and try to sleep at 10:30pm, you’ve only been awake for thirteen and a half hours. For most adults, that’s insufficient time to build strong sleep pressure, particularly if you’ve been relatively sedentary. The solution is earlier wake times and more physical activity during the day.

Second, you might be getting light exposure too late in the evening, which suppresses melatonin and shifts your circadian rhythm later. We’ll cover this extensively in future articles in this series, but the brief version: dim your lights starting two hours before bed, avoid screens entirely in the final hour, and get very bright light in the morning to anchor your circadian rhythm earlier.

Third, you might be a natural evening chronotype trying to sleep earlier than your biology prefers. If you’re a genuine night owl, falling asleep at 10:30pm will always be somewhat difficult. You can shift your rhythm earlier somewhat through light exposure and consistent wake times, but you may never become someone who feels naturally sleepy at 10pm. Consider whether your schedule can accommodate a later sleep time that matches your natural rhythm, or accept that you’re managing a chronic mismatch.

Fourth, your wind-down routine might not be starting early enough. If you’re beginning wind-down activities at 10pm for a 10:30pm bedtime, you haven’t given your body enough time to transition. Start at 8:30 or 9pm and see if that makes a difference.

“My mind races no matter what I do.” If your mind is consistently active at bedtime despite wind-down efforts, you need to address this more directly. The techniques:

Brain dump journaling (as discussed earlier), to externalise the thoughts rather than trying to suppress them. If you’ve tried this and it hasn’t helped, try doing it earlier in the evening (7 or 8pm) rather than immediately before bed, so you have more distance from the thoughts by bedtime.

Meditation or mindfulness practice focused specifically on noting thoughts without engaging with them. When a thought arises, mentally note “thinking” and return attention to your breath. The goal isn’t to stop thoughts but to change your relationship with them. You are observing rather than getting caught up in them.

The worry window technique described earlier works well here. If you have persistent anxieties, give them dedicated time earlier in the evening so they’re less likely to intrude at bedtime.

Consider whether you have clinical anxiety that would benefit from professional treatment. If your racing mind is accompanied by other anxiety symptoms like excessive worry throughout the day, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and/or physical tension, then therapy (particularly CBT or ACT) and potentially medication might be more effective than wind-down techniques alone.

Progressive muscle relaxation can help if your racing mind comes with physical tension. The systematic tensing and releasing of muscles gives your mind something to focus on while releasing physical holding patterns that might be feeding mental arousal.

“My partner doesn’t do this and it’s disruptive.” If you’re trying to wind down starting at 9pm but your partner is watching television at full volume or wants to have involved conversations, you need explicit negotiation. Explain what you’re trying to do and why it matters. Ask for specific accommodations: headphones after 9pm, relocating screen time to a different room, saving complex conversations for earlier in the evening.

This might feel uncomfortable or unreasonable to ask for, but consider the alternative: you sacrifice your sleep to avoid the conversation, build resentment, and continue sleeping poorly. That’s not better. Your needs matter. Good partners can accommodate different schedules when both people’s needs are clearly communicated.

If your partner’s schedule is genuinely incompatible with yours (e.g. they work late, keep much later hours, or have different sleep needs), you might need to accept some compromise in your routine. Maybe you use earplugs or a white noise machine to buffer against disruption. Maybe you do your wind-down routine in a different room. Maybe you accept that your bedtime convergence time is less peaceful than ideal, but you still maintain the routine to the best of your ability.

“I have kids.” Young children fundamentally disrupt evening routines because they require attention at unpredictable times and don’t follow adult schedules. If you have infants or toddlers, your wind-down routine will be compromised, and that’s just reality.

Strategies for managing this include:

Create a family wind-down time where everyone is transitioning toward sleep together. Dim lights throughout the house, quiet activities, shared bedtime routines. This helps children sleep better while creating at least a calmer environment for you, even if you’re not doing your ideal routine.

Trade off nights with your partner if possible; one person handles bedtime routine with kids while the other gets uninterrupted wind-down time, alternating nights. This ensures both parents get some high-quality wind-down time even if not every night.

Adapt your routine to be interruptible. You’re not going to get thirty unbroken minutes of reading, but you might get ten minutes here and five minutes there. That’s still valuable. Don’t abandon the routine entirely just because you can’t do it perfectly.

Accept that this phase is temporary. Children grow up, become more independent, and develop their own consistent sleep schedules that give you predictable evening time. The sleep deprivation of early parenthood doesn’t last forever, even though it feels like it might while you’re in it.

Prioritise the elements of your routine that matter most. If you can only do one thing, maybe it’s five minutes of breathing exercises. If you can do two things, maybe it’s breathing and a short journal entry. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good; some wind down is infinitely better than none.

The Bigger Picture

Your wind down routine isn’t just about sleep mechanics, though those matter. It’s about creating a daily transition that honours both the demands of your waking life and your need for restoration. It’s about recognising that you cannot sustain high performance, deep relationships, creative work, or meaningful engagement with life if you’re perpetually operating from depletion.

Modern life is relentlessly activating. You’re expected to be responsive, productive, engaged, and available from the moment you wake until you collapse into bed. Work follows you home through email. Social connection happens through platforms designed to be maximally stimulating. Entertainment is engineered to prevent you from stopping. You’re surrounded by artificial light that tells your body it’s permanent daytime. Your nervous system is rarely allowed to fully stand down.

A wind down routine is an act of resistance against this pattern. It’s saying “No, this time is mine. I’m not available for work, for urgent response, for content consumption, or for anything that doesn’t serve my transition toward rest.” It’s reclaiming agency over your evening rather than allowing it to be consumed by whatever demands happen to arise or whatever distraction is most immediately available.

This might sound grandiose for what amounts to reading a book and doing some stretches before bed. But consider what you’re actually doing: you’re deliberately choosing to prioritise your wellbeing over productivity. You’re valuing rest over entertainment. You’re practicing the discipline of disengagement in a culture that valorises constant engagement. You’re trusting that you can let go of control, stop monitoring and responding, and allow yourself to simply be, rather than constantly doing.

The people who sleep well aren’t people who happen to be good at sleeping. They’re people who’ve made sleep a priority and structured their lives accordingly. They’ve accepted that some things they might want to do in the evening aren’t compatible with sleeping well, and they’ve chosen sleep. They’ve recognised that the nighttime hours before bed are fundamentally different from daytime hours and should be treated differently.

Your wind down routine is training yourself in this recognition. Every night you engage in the routine, you’re practising the skill of downregulation and the ability to consciously shift your nervous system from activation to rest. This is a skill that extends beyond sleep. It’s the ability to recover from stress, to not carry activation from one situation into the next, to consciously choose your state rather than being perpetually at the mercy of whatever stimulus you just encountered.

People who develop this skill tend to be more resilient, less reactive, and more capable of presence. They don’t carry work stress into family time. They don’t carry an argument from the afternoon into the evening. They can close one chapter of their day and open another deliberately rather than having everything blur together in a continuous stream of activation.

And the sleep that results from good wind-down practices enables everything else you’re trying to do. When you sleep well, you have the patience to be the person you want to be in your relationships. The focus to do work that matters rather than just reacting to what’s urgent. The resilience to face difficulty without collapsing into avoidance or despair. The capacity to experience joy, not just get through the day.

This is why I’m asking you to take this seriously. Wind-down routines aren’t just some optimisation hack that gives you an edge, they’re a fundamental practice of self-care in the truest sense. You’re caring for yourself in a way that enables you to engage with life fully rather than surviving it depleted.

Begin Your Wind Down Routine Tonight

You don’t need to implement everything in this article at once. Start with this:

Tonight, two hours before your target bedtime, put your phone in another room. Choose just one wind-down activity from the list we discussed. Reading if you enjoy it, stretching if you carry tension, or breathing exercises if your mind races. Do it for five to fifteen minutes. Then complete your basic bedtime routine and get into bed.

Tomorrow night, do it again. And the night after. Once that single activity is established (i.e. once it feels natural rather than effortful), add a second activity. Then a third. Build your routine gradually, layer by layer, until you’ve created a sequence that reliably shifts you from the activation of your day to the readiness for sleep.

Notice what changes. Notice if you fall asleep more easily. Notice if you sleep more deeply. Notice if you wake feeling more rested. Notice if you’re less reactive during the day, more present, more capable of the things that matter to you.

This is the foundation. The next article in this series will address light management and understanding how light affects your circadian rhythm and what to do about it. But light management builds on the foundation of a consistent schedule and a proper wind-down routine. Get these right first.

Everything becomes easier when you stop fighting your biology and start working with it. Your body knows how to sleep brilliantly. Your job is simply to create the conditions that allow it to do what it already knows how to do.

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