How to sleep better and fix your sleep schedule

Get up at the same time every day, weekends included, and get outside into daylight soon after. Keep caffeine to the morning, keep alcohol away from bedtime, give the last hour to winding down, and charge the phone outside the bedroom. Adults need seven hours or more on a regular basis. If poor sleep has lasted for months despite all of that, see a doctor: for long-term insomnia, the first treatment the guidelines recommend is a therapy called CBT-I, not more tips.

How much sleep adults need#

After reviewing more than 5,000 papers, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society agreed that adults aged 18 to 60 should sleep seven or more hours a night on a regular basis. Regularly sleeping less is associated with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, more errors and accidents, and a higher risk of death. More than nine hours may be right for young adults, people recovering from lost sleep and people who are ill; for everyone else, whether long sleep carries a risk is uncertain. The NHS gives seven to nine hours for adults.

How to fix your sleep schedule#

Fix the wake time first#

You can choose when you get up. You cannot choose when you fall asleep. So the anchor is the morning: the same wake time every day, including weekends, which is on the lists from the AASM, the CDC and the NHS. Go to bed when you are sleepy, not just because the clock says so.

Get daylight early#

Light is the strongest signal the body clock has, and timing decides which way it moves: morning light shifts the clock earlier, evening light shifts it later. Outdoor light is far brighter than indoor light, up to 25,000 lux in full daylight against about 500 lux for standard office lighting. In one small study, eight people spent a week camping with only natural light, and their internal night came to start about two hours earlier, in line with sunset; the latest risers shifted most. A few minutes outside after you get up, without the phone, is the cheapest change on this page. Time outside has more on why it is worth it.

Move caffeine to the morning#

Caffeine lasts longer than it feels. A 2023 meta-analysis of 24 studies found that it cut total sleep by an average of 45 minutes and added 9 minutes to the time it takes to fall asleep. To avoid losing sleep, the authors worked out, a regular coffee (about 107 mg of caffeine) should come at least 8.8 hours before bed, and a typical pre-workout supplement (217.5 mg) at least 13.2 hours before. In a small home study, a large dose of 400 mg taken six hours before bed still cut measured sleep by more than an hour, and the sleepers did not notice. The European Food Safety Authority says even 100 mg close to bedtime can affect sleep in some adults.

For an 11 p.m. bedtime, 8.8 hours means the last coffee by about 2 p.m.

Keep alcohol away from bedtime#

A drink can make you drowsy, but it is a poor sleeping aid. A review of studies in healthy volunteers found that alcohol disrupts the second half of the night. A 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies found REM sleep delayed and reduced from about two standard drinks, and more so with more; falling asleep faster showed up only at around five. The NHS advises no alcohol, tea or coffee for at least six hours before bed.

Give the last hour to winding down#

The NHS suggests relaxing for at least an hour before bed, with a bath or a book, and the AASM and the CDC suggest turning devices off at least 30 minutes before. Keep the bedroom quiet and cool, skip a large meal late, and drink less close to bedtime. If your nights are poor, skip daytime naps too, as the NHS advises for insomnia.

Charge the phone outside the bedroom#

Of everything here, this is the one I would do first. In a survey of 45,202 students in Norway, each extra hour of screen time after getting into bed went with 59% higher odds of insomnia symptoms and 24 fewer minutes of sleep, and it made no difference whether the screen was used for social media or anything else. Whatever is on the screen, the time in bed with it seems to come out of sleep.

For anyone quitting pornography, I think the phone in bed is also the most important cue to remove, and charging it in another room is the biggest single cue removal on this site. The bedroom and the phone explains why, and how to stop using your phone in bed covers the practical side.

If you cannot sleep, get up#

If you have not fallen asleep after about 20 minutes, the AASM's advice is to get out of bed, do something quiet in low light, away from screens, and go back when you feel sleepy. This is the heart of a method called stimulus control: the bed is kept for sleep, so that getting into it stops bringing on the frustration of lying awake. The AASM suggests stimulus control as a treatment for chronic insomnia in its own right.

When tips are not enough: insomnia and CBT-I#

Trouble sleeping that lasts three months or more counts as long-term insomnia, by the NHS's definition. For that, guidance in the US and Europe agrees that the first treatment should be cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBT-I, rather than pills.

• The American College of Physicians recommends CBT-I as the initial treatment for all adults with chronic insomnia, a strong recommendation based on moderate-quality evidence.
• The 2023 European insomnia guideline calls it the first-line treatment for adults of any age, delivered in person or digitally, and notes that exercise may help alongside it.
• The AASM recommends multicomponent CBT-I, and advises against relying on sleep-hygiene tips like the ones above as the only treatment.

CBT-I works on the thoughts and behaviors that keep people from sleeping well. It usually combines stimulus control; sleep restriction, which limits time in bed to the sleep you actually get and then slowly extends it, and is more tiring at first; relaxation training; and work on the worries that keep you awake. The AASM is plain that it is not a quick fix: it takes steady practice, and its advice is to talk to a doctor or a sleep specialist about which methods fit you. The NHS offers CBT face to face or as an online self-help program, and says GPs now rarely prescribe sleeping pills, and then for a few days or weeks at most. If you already take medicine for sleep, do not stop it on your own; talk to the doctor who prescribed it.

When to see a doctor#

See a doctor if:

• changing your sleep habits has not helped, you have had trouble sleeping for months, or it is making daily life hard to cope with (the NHS's three reasons);
• you snore loudly, your breathing stops and starts in your sleep, or you gasp or choke at night, especially if you also wake often, feel very tired in the day or wake with headaches. These are signs of sleep apnea, which the NHS says can be serious if it is not diagnosed and treated. You may not know you have them until someone else tells you;
• you are worried you sleep far too little or far too much, as the consensus statement itself advises.

If you are sleepy enough in the day to nod off, do not drive; the NHS says people with confirmed excessive sleepiness must not drive until it is under control. And if sleeplessness comes with low mood or thoughts of harming yourself, talk to someone today. The help page lists crisis lines.

Questions people ask#

Does blue light from screens really keep you awake?#

A little, and less than its reputation. In the best-known lab study, twelve adults who read on a bright tablet for four hours before bed, five nights in a row, took nearly ten minutes longer to fall asleep than with a printed book, released less melatonin and were less alert the next morning. But when 167 young adults were randomly assigned to an hour of phone use before bed with Night Shift on, with it off, or no phone at all, a week of wrist trackers found no difference in sleep between the groups; among those who already slept more than 6.8 hours, no phone did best. A review of light and sleep concluded that nobody yet knows how much of a phone's effect comes from its light and how much from what is on it. Either way the fix is distance, not a filter.

Is it bad to sleep more than nine hours?#

Not necessarily. The consensus statement says more than nine hours may be right for young adults, people catching up on lost sleep and people who are ill, and that for others the risk is uncertain. If you regularly sleep far more than you used to, mention it to a doctor.

Do sleeping pills fix insomnia?#

They are not the first treatment. The American College of Physicians recommends CBT-I first, and adding medication for the short term only when CBT-I alone has not worked, decided together with a doctor.

Sleep is where quitting and energy meet. The late hour is where the habit lived, and a fixed morning, an hour of winding down and a phone outside the door take that hour back for sleep. A rested day brings fewer of the inside cues that low energy is made of. If you are stopping, the thirty days are a good time to set this up, and to watch what changes.