As many people with sleep problems will know by now, falling to sleep and staying asleep has as much to do with hacking human psychology as with silk pillows and the perfect white noise podcast.
As more and more of us have trouble winding down before bed, overriding anxious thoughts and lulling yourself into a peaceful and restful place is paramount when it comes to catching a few z's.
A new study has revealed that one effective way of tricking your brain into sleep is something many of us have been doing for years: writing a to-do list.
The study, carried out by Baylor University in Texas, found that people who spent five minutes noting down their upcoming tasks dozed off nine minutes faster on average.
The team gathered 57 students who were split into two groups, with researchers monitoring their sleep. Students would spend a weekday night in the lab and were given a writing assignment, either a "to-do" list or a "completed" list.
Those who wrote down their upcoming tasks fell asleep around 16 minutes after the lights went out, while those who recalled what tasks they had achieved in previous days dozed off after an average of 25 minutes.
According to lead author and the study's leader, Dr Michael Scullin, noting down things to remember allowed people to "offload" their thoughts - an action that allowed their mind to be more at ease, reducing their stress and easing them into a sound sleep.
"We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime", he explained.
"Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract nighttime difficulties with falling asleep.
"There are two schools of thought about this.
"One is that writing about the future would lead to increased worry about unfinished tasks and delay sleep, while journaling about completed activities should not trigger worry.
"The alternative hypothesis is that writing a to-do list will ‘offload’ those thoughts and reduce worry."
