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While writing your list of things to do at night, naturopathic sleep doctor Catherine Darley, ND once told mbg that you basically put your stress in bed. She recommends taking a few minutes to do this about an hour before you want to fall asleep.
When we reached out to licensed clinical psychologist Elena Welsh, Ph.D., for her opinion, she confirmed the mental health benefits of a good night’s list. “There is research that scribbles [to-do’s] down, relieving your brain from having to follow them, is associated with longer sleep and better sleep quality, ”says Welsh.
The best evidence for this comes from a 2018 study from the Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory at Baylor University. For this research, 57 healthy college students completed a 5-minute writing assignment before having their sleep monitored. Either they wrote down the tasks they had already completed, or they wrote down the tasks they needed to remember to complete in the next few days.
Students who wrote future tasks fell asleep much faster than those who wrote previous tasks. And oddly enough, the more detailed their to-do list, the faster they fall asleep. This led the study authors to conclude that “to make it easier to fall asleep, individuals may benefit from writing a very specific to-do list for 5 minutes at bedtime rather than keeping a journal of completed activities. “.
Welsh says this research follows what we know about human psychology. “If we have something that we want to remember to do, it looks like an open tab in our brain. This is where it consumes resources,” she explains. By putting it on paper, we flush out some mental space so that the brain can more easily go into sleep mode.
Once you’ve done that, Darley suggests continuing with another calming activity to keep clearing your mind before bed. You can read a book, do a relaxing meditation, or take a sleep-promoting supplement. (Here are our all-time favorites for improving your zzz.) *
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