12 expert-backed habits to help fix your sleep schedule

How to know if it’s your sleep habits or something else

If you’re spending most nights worrying about work or doomscrolling until dawn, you might simply need more sleep. But if you’re living in a persistent state of exhaustion no matter how much sleep you get, there could be something else going on.

Health issues like nutrient deficiencies, thyroid disorders, blood sugar imbalances, hormonal changes, infections, and other chronic conditions can cause fatigue, which might mean you’re tired even after you get a full night of sleep.

Sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and hypersomnia are more likely to cause persistent sleepiness—or feeling so tired that you have to actively fight off sleep all day long, Dr. Silverman explains. You may also wake up feeling like you never slept, or crash at bedtime but have a hard time falling or staying asleep.

Related: Why am I so tired? How to know if it’s your physical or mental health

If you’ve been feeling consistently drained for at least three months, or if it’s starting to interfere with your ability to function, it’s worth checking in with your primary care doctor to rule out any health conditions or sleep disorders that may be at play.

That said, if you’re pretty sure your sleep habits are to blame, here are some expert-backed ways to fix your sleep schedule.

12 habits to help you sleep better and feel more energized

1. Stop sleeping in on the weekends.

“Good sleep begins in the morning,” Dr. Silverman says. “From the moment you wake up, your brain is preparing for the following night of sleep.” To keep your internal body clock running smoothly, she recommends waking up around the same time every day—yes, even on the weekends.

A reliable bedtime is helpful too but “rise time is far more important for circadian health,” Dr. Silverman explains. “Keeping a consistent rise time helps communicate to your brain when you should be feeling sleepy each night. The more consistent your rise time, the more consistent you’ll start to get sleepy around the same time each evening.”

2. Whenever possible, get natural sunlight within an hour of waking up.

This is also about regulating your circadian rhythm and helping your body know that nighttime isn’t when you want to be wide awake. “Sunlight is a master regulator of your circadian rhythm, and it regulates the timing of your sleep-wake cycle as well as your mood and energy levels,” Dr. Silverman says.

“If you really want to set yourself up for sleep success, start your morning off with consistent natural light.” Combining this with a set wake time can make a big difference in your overall sleep quality pretty quickly, she says.

The best way to do this is by spending 15-20 minutes outside within 30-60 minutes of waking up. That might look like taking your dog for a morning walk or having your coffee outside. Simply letting the light pour in through your windows isn’t quite enough to do the trick, Dr. Silverman says, as most windows are designed to block the sun’s rays (helpful for not getting a sunburn indoors—less helpful for the circadian rhythm benefits). Though if sitting near a bright, open window is all you can manage some days, that’s better than nothing.

3. Create a wind-down routine that tells your brain you’re ready for bed.

You can’t expect your body to go from 100 to zero when you decide it’s time to sleep. Most people need to wind down slowly. “This allows you to go from ‘doing’ mode to just ‘being’ mode,” Dr. Silverman says. A good nighttime routine really depends on what helps you feel relaxed, but she suggests a few options: gentle stretching, meditation, breathing exercises, reading a book, taking a warm bath or shower, and listening to calming music.

Once you find something that works, keep it up. “Consistent activities before bed become a cue or signal to your brain that it’s time to prepare for sleep, often resulting in the ability to fall asleep more easily,” she explains. This consistency can also help “lower your overall stress level by providing a predictable and calming end to your day.”

4. Use a brain dump journal before bed.

If you often lie awake at night worrying about everything you need to do the next day, this one’s for you. As part of your wind-down routine, jot down anything that’s likely to keep you up at night, suggests Tori-Lyn Mills, licensed clinical professional counselor at Thriveworks. This could be things that are totally out of your control (like something scary on the news) or something you simply can’t resolve tonight (like how you’ll handle a work dilemma).

The point is to give these concerns a place to exist outside of your head so that you don’t feel the need to keep thinking about them tonight. “Separating yourself from those things can give your brain a break so that if or when you revisit it, there is a possibility that you will see it differently.”

5. Set limits on the devices that tempt you at night.

If you stay up late because you finally have some sweet, uninterrupted time to scroll and stream to your heart’s content, you might be guilty of what experts call “revenge bedtime procrastination.” It feels good in the moment, but it creates a cycle that leaves you more exhausted the next day. “You’re kind of taking revenge on the day, and then you’re procrastinating sleep to have time for yourself,” Mills explains. “Even though you know it’s going to affect you, you do it anyway.”

To help curb this habit, Mills suggests setting boundaries around whatever you’re drawn to most at this time—whether it’s the TV, your phone, or a specific app. This could mean getting rid of your bedroom TV and setting a curfew for couch time, sleeping with your phone outside of your bedroom (alarm clocks still exist!), or using your phone’s Screen Time feature to limit certain apps after hours. You could even try a device like Brick that makes it harder to bypass your phone boundaries once you set them.

6. Aim for high-intensity movement earlier in the day and gentle movement at night.

You’ve probably heard this before: Moving your body on a regular basis is good for all sorts of reasons, including your sleep. “Physical activity helps to strengthen or boost your ‘sleep drive,’ which is the biological sleep process that builds over the course of each day,” Dr. Silverman explains. While there’s no “best” time to work out, many people do find that exercising too close to bedtime makes it harder to fall asleep, since it can raise the core body temperature and increase endorphins, both of which can keep you awake.

“Exercising too late—and specifically rigorous or higher intensity exercise—may also interfere with having enough time to prioritize your wind-down routine and allow your body to cool off. On the other hand, gentle stretches before bed may help to release any muscle tension or stress from the day, which may make it easier to fall asleep.”

7. Turn your thermostat down.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends a bedroom temperature between 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit for an optimal sleep environment, and this is the range that most sleep specialists reference too, Dr. Silverman says. This is because a drop in core body temperature often helps bring on sleep, according to research in Frontiers in Neuroscience. This is also known as the “warm bath effect,” which explains how allowing the body to cool down before bed can help mimic the drop in body temperature that our brain associates with sleep.

Of course, everyone’s preferences are a bit different, so “the ideal room temp range is the one that feels most comfortable for you,” Dr. Silverman says. But if you find yourself tossing and turning (and slightly sweaty) most nights, you might want to try turning down the temperature for a week to see if that helps.

8. Eat an earlier dinner.

Some people can finish off a full meal and go right to sleep with no issue, but in general, sleep experts suggest you have your last meal of the day at least three to four hours before bedtime, “so that your body can properly digest your food and minimize any sleep interference,” Dr. Silverman says. A 2024 study in PLoS One backs this up, finding that later meals were associated with worse sleep scores.

9. Try 4-7-8 breathing to calm nighttime anxiety.

Mills often encourages her clients to use breathing exercises to manage anxious thoughts and calm down before bed. She suggests 4-7-8 breathing, which involves inhaling for four seconds through your nose, holding your breath for seven seconds, and then exhaling out of your mouth for eight seconds.

“Practicing these breathing techniques before bed can also get your body to a place where it uses those breathing techniques at other times when you feel anxious,” Mills adds. If you need a little more help, guided meditations may do the trick. “Guided meditations can offer a soft voice and encouraging words that you can focus on instead of the anxious thoughts in your head.”

10. Try cognitive shuffling when you can’t turn your brain off.

If you’re someone who tends to feel mentally wired or alert at night, this coping strategy can help. “Cognitive shuffling is a mental exercise designed to quiet a racing mind by thinking of random, emotionally neutral words or images in a scattered, non-linear way,” Dr. Silverman says.

Here’s an example: Choose a neutral word, like “stone,” “plant,” or “river.” Next, create unrelated words with each letter—for example, you could start with the first letter “s” from “stone” and think of another word that starts with “s,” like “sun,” she explains. Then move to the next letter, “t,” and think of a word—maybe “table.” Continue doing this, making sure that the words are simple, unrelated, and not stressful or negatively charged, Dr. Silverman says. “Picture each word for a few seconds, like a flashcard in your mind. Let the image appear and gently fade.”

Keep doing this, picking a new word when you need one. This mental exercise “can help shift your mind away from problem-solving and rumination when you’re trying to fall asleep,” she explains.

11. If your body’s too tense or stressed to sleep, try progressive muscle relaxation.

This relaxation technique involves gently tensing and then releasing different muscle groups one at a time, “usually moving from head to toe or toe to head,” Dr. Silverman says. “This process helps reduce physical tension, calm your nervous system, and increase awareness of the difference between stress or tension and relaxation in your body.”

The goal here is to promote a relaxation response in your body—not necessarily to make sleep happen, she clarifies. But it can be a helpful part of your wind-down routine if you’re holding a lot of tension in your body.

12. Get out of bed when you can’t fall back to sleep.

While breathing exercises and tactics like cognitive shuffling and progressive muscle relaxation can help calm your mind and body before bed, they’re actually not great for when you need help getting back to sleep in the middle of the night, Dr. Silverman says. In fact, they tend to backfire. “The reason this happens is because of sleep effort; the more effort you put into sleeping, the more elusive sleep becomes,” she explains.

If you’re someone who tends to wake up in the middle of the night and lie awake, Dr. Silverman suggests something called “stimulus control” instead, which is a core tenant of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for insomnia. “Stimulus control is the practice of getting out of bed and going into another room if you’re unable to fall asleep within 15 to 20 minutes of being awake at night.” This helps to separate your bed and bedroom from the negative association of lying awake at night, anxiously trying to sleep. While in the other room, do something that’s calming and enjoyable—like reading a book or something else sans screen—and only go back to bed when you’re feeling sleepy.

How therapy can help you sleep better

If you’ve tried the habits above and still find yourself struggling to get a good night’s rest, it might be worth talking to a mental health provider. Sleep and mental health are deeply connected, and sometimes the most effective way to address what’s keeping you up at night is to work through it with a professional.

Therapy can help you build better coping skills for managing stress, anxiety, and overwhelm throughout the day, so that by the time bedtime rolls around, you’re not carrying quite so much with you into bed.

For those dealing with insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is considered the gold standard treatment. It combines behavioral strategies (like the stimulus control technique mentioned above) with cognitive work to address the underlying thought patterns that perpetuate sleeplessness. The goal is to make sleep feel less like a high-stakes performance and more like something that can happen naturally.