Why Trying to Fall Asleep Keeps You Awake

Before we begin, this week's piece comes with something new! I built The 7-Day Sleep Reset: a proper protocol based on clinical insomnia research and behaviour design, with 15 printable tools and the worksheets I use with actual coaching clients. The guide is the full 7-day programme and it’s $17. If you want the one technique that changed everything for me, plus one experiment to try tonight, keep reading.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been teaching a human-centred design course to 70 adult learners in Singapore, from Latin America.

Which means evenings, 8pm to midnight, and a lot of coffee at 10pm to keep my energy up for a room full of people 12 hours ahead of me.

I do this a few times a year and used to do it without a second thought when I lived in Singapore, but now that I’m on the other side of the world it means my whole schedule flips.

A few weeks of late nights, stacked on top of my legaltech work, stacked on top of my Unwritten work and I’ve honestly been feeling like I’ve been reassembled slightly wrong.

The funny thing is, I used to live like this all the time.

Go out, drink 2 bottles of wine until stupid o’clock, get to work on a few hours of sleep, do it again.

For years. I didn’t think about sleep because I didn’t think sleep was something you could be good or bad at. It was just the gap between going out and going to work.

These days, few things make me feel more like I’ve got my shit together than being in bed by 10:30pm, warm shower done, some ginger tea, reading a page or two of a book before I turn the light off.

Waking up fresh. Full of energy. That quiet feeling of: yep, I’m doing alright.

It sounds boring. It is boring. It’s also one of the best things I’ve ever done for my health.

So when 3 weeks of teaching across timezones blew that up, I did notice.

Why Everything Feels So Hard (It's Not Just You) Episode #43: 14 minutes of negative news makes you catastrophise about your own life. Here are 4 evidence-based ways to cope when everything feels a bit too much. ​ 🎧 Listen Now

Hey! I'm Noemie Wellbeing by Design for burned-out overachievers allergic to self-help BS. Evidence-based habits, mindset shifts and real talk from a Former Queen of Bad Habits. No toxic trends or wellness hustle, just science, soul, and a little bit of chaos ⚡️ Did someone forward you this email? ​ ​Subscribe here​

​​​​​​