How To FALL Aspleed Fast

Train Your Brain to Fall Asleep Faster

A decade ago it might have taken me 15-30 minutes to fall asleep most nights. Sometimes it would take more than an hour if I had a lot on my mind. And very occasionally I could fall asleep within 5 minutes or less if I was very sleepy.
Today it’s fairly normal for me to fall asleep within 30 seconds or less, and often I’m able to fall asleep in less than 1 second. My best is probably around 1/4 of a second.
How do I know this? Because I have a witness that tells me how long I was out. I also know that I was sleeping because I awaken with the memory of a dream. If my sleep time is only a second or a fraction of a second, then it’s obviously a very short dream. Some time dilation occurs though, so a 1-second dream may feel significantly longer… perhaps as if 5-10 seconds have passed within the dream world.
Is this narcolepsy? No, narcolepsy is very different. I don’t just fall asleep at odd times throughout the day, and I don’t have excessive daytime sleepiness. Most days I don’t take any naps. One thing I do have in common with narcoleptics is that I can start having dreams immediately when I fall asleep, whereas most people don’t enter the dream state for at least an hour. I regard this as a positive adaptation though, not a problem or defect.
I can’t normally force myself to sleep when I’m not at all sleepy. But when I’m ready to go to sleep, I can go to sleep very quickly without wasting time trying to fall asleep.
I’m not able to do this 100% perfectly. If I have a stressful day and there’s a lot on my mind at night, I may find it more difficult to relax and go to sleep. But most of the time under normal, average conditions, I can get to sleep within 30 seconds or less.
I reached this point not by the exertion of conscious will but rather through a long-term process of sleep training. So don’t think that there’s some mental trick that you can use right away to make this happen instantly. However, once you’ve trained yourself to this point, the process is effortless. You’ll be able to do it automatically. It will be no more difficult than blinking.

Understanding the Training Process

The training process may take a long time — months or even years, depending on how far you want to go — but it’s not at all difficult, and it needn’t take a serious time commitment. In fact, the training will most likely save you a significant amount of time. The only challenging part is maintaining consistency long enough to get results.
First consider that it’s possible for you to fall asleep faster. Have you ever been really tired and sleepy at the end of a day, and you fell asleep very quickly after getting into bed? Have you ever drifted off while watching a movie or reading a book? Have you ever fallen asleep within less than 2 minutes after lying down? If you’ve done it before, then consider the possibility that your brain already knows how to fall asleep quickly, and if you create the right conditions, then you’re capable of doing this again. You just need to train your brain to do this more consistently.
The main reason that you aren’t falling asleep faster is that you haven’t trained your brain to do so. You may be able to reach that point eventually, but you’re not there yet. Similarly, you may be able to do the splits if you engage in flexibility training, but in the absence of such training, you probably won’t be able to do the splits at all.
If you want to fall asleep faster, you must incentivize your brain to drop all other activity and immediately transition into sleep when you desire to do so. That is the essence of this approach. If there are few consequences for a lazy approach to falling asleep, then your brain will continue to be lazy and inefficient in this area. You haven’t given it a good enough reason to select more efficient behaviors.
Your brain is always active, even during deep sleep, and it operates in different modes of consciousness, including beta (waking), alpha, theta, and delta phases. When you lie in bed waiting for sleep, you’re waiting for your brain to switch modes. An untrained brain will often take its own sweet time making the necessary state change. So you may dwell on other thoughts… or toss and turn… or just lie awake until your brain is finally ready to transition. This is a common experience. Without incentives to become more efficient, your brain will remain naturally lazy by default.
Your conscious mind might very much like to go to sleep, but it isn’t in charge. Your subconscious determines when you fall asleep. If your subconscious mind is in no hurry to fall asleep, then your conscious mind will have a hard time forcing it. In fact, your subconscious may continue to bubble up thoughts and ideas to occupy your conscious mind, distracting you with mental clutter instead of letting you relax and slide into sleep.
A trained subconscious mind is obedient and fast. When the conscious mind says to sleep, the subconscious activates sleep mode immediately. But this only works if you’re feeling at least partially sleepy. If the subconscious doesn’t agree with the need for sleep, it can still reject the request.
The process I’ll share next will teach your brain that putzing around isn’t an option anymore and that when you decide to go to sleep, it needs to transition immediately and without delay.

The Process

The process involves using short, timed naps to train your brain to fall asleep more quickly. Here’s how it works:
If and when you feel drowsy at some point during the day, give yourself permission to take a 20-minute nap. But only allow yourself exactly 20 minutes total. Use a timer to set an alarm. I often do this by using Siri on my iPhone by saying, “Set a timer for 20 minutes” or “Wake me up in 20 minutes.” The first one sets a countdown timer, while the later phrase sets an alarm to go off at a specific time. Sometimes I prefer to use a kitchen timer with a 20-minute countdown.
Begin the timer as soon as you lie down for your nap. Whether you sleep or not, and regardless of how long it takes you to fall asleep, you have 20 minutes total for this activity… not a minute more.
Simply relax and allow yourself to fall asleep as you normally would. You don’t have to do anything special here, so don’t try to force it. If you fall asleep, great. If you just lie there awake for 20 minutes, also great. And if you sleep for some fraction of the time, that’s perfectly okay too.
At the end of the 20 minutes, you must get up immediately. No lingering. This part is crucial. If you’re tempted to continue napping after the alarm goes off, then put the alarm across the room so you have to get up to turn it off. Or have someone else forcibly yank you off the couch or bed when they hear the alarm. But no matter what, get up immediately. The nap is over. If you’re still tired, you can take another nap later — wait at least an hour — but don’t let yourself go back to sleep right away.
I think it’s best to do your nap practice during the day if you can, but you can also do it in the evening, as long as it’s at least an hour before your normal bedtime. Perhaps the best time for an evening nap is right after dinner, when many people feel a little sleepy.
You don’t have to take the naps every day, but do them at least a few times a week if you can. I think the ideal practice would be one nap per day.