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How to fall asleep fast: Matthew Walker's 7 steps for tonight

How to fall asleep fast: dim the lights an hour before bed, cool down, wind down, and get up after about 20 minutes awake. Matthew Walker's steps, sourced.

1h Protocols · October 4, 2026 · 10 min read

To fall asleep fast, start an hour before bed: switch off half the lights, let your body cool down and do something calm, then get into bed only when you feel sleepy. Once you're there, stop trying. If sleep hasn't come after about 20 minutes, get up, and go back when it feels close.

Most of that plan comes from Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Why We Sleep (Huberman Lab). We think of sleep as a light bulb, he says, and expect it to arrive the moment we switch off, when it's "much more physiologically like trying to land a plane." You wouldn't pull into your garage at 40 miles an hour; you slow down well before the turn (Huberman Lab).

Start landing an hour before bed

Light, body temperature and a busy mind all take time to settle, so the first three steps happen before you lie down.

1. Switch off half the lights

In the last hour before bed, Walker suggests switching off half the lights in your home, or even three-quarters. Try it for a week, he says: "You will be surprised at how sleepy that darkness will make you feel" (The Diary of a CEO). Darkness lets your brain release melatonin, the hormone that helps time the start of sleep (Huberman Lab).

Use lamps placed low rather than ceiling lights. The eye cells that set the brain's clock sit mostly in the lower half of the retina, which looks upward, so overhead light reaches them most (Huberman Lab). The NHS also suggests keeping phones, tablets and computers away for that hour (NHS). So if you go to bed at 11, the ceiling lights go off at 10, a lamp at table height stays on, and your phone goes on silent, face down.

2. Warm up so you can cool down

To fall asleep and stay asleep, your core temperature needs to drop a little, Walker says, which is why it's easier to drop off in a room that's too cold than one that's too hot. His bedroom target is about 18 °C, around 65 °F. Thick socks or a hot-water bottle are fine, as long as the room itself is cool (The Diary of a CEO).

Warming up first helps, which sounds backwards. Warm water brings blood to the surface of your skin, Walker explains, and when you step out, heat pours away from your core (Huberman Lab). In a 2019 review of the research, a warm shower or bath one to two hours before bedtime shortened the time people took to fall asleep, even after as little as 10 minutes in the water. The authors add that the evidence is still thin, especially on timing (Haghayegh et al.).

3. Give your mind a runway

The third step is a wind-down: whatever relaxes you, at the same point every evening. Walker suggests podcasts, reading, meditation or light stretching (Huberman Lab).

How long you need depends on your day. Sleep scientist Sophie Bostock thinks of the evening as a runway: the faster you've been going, the more length you need to slow down (ZOE). Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, splits the last hour into three 20-minute blocks: jobs you have to finish, then washing and teeth, then something calming (The Diary of a CEO).

The 1h Protocol for Better Sleep uses the same word. Its runway is the last 30 to 60 minutes before lights-out, with nothing new arriving. If even that feels out of reach, start by leaving your phone to charge outside the bedroom. And if your head is busy with tomorrow, a worry list written earlier in the evening gives those thoughts somewhere to go; our guide to sleep anxiety shows how to set one up.

Someone in pajamas walking a runway toward bed as the runway lights dim and a paper plane comes in to land

How to fall asleep fast once you're in bed

4. Go to bed when you're sleepy

Tired and sleepy are different signals. Sleep psychologist Jade Wu describes tired as a worn-out body asking for rest, and sleepy as drooping eyelids and a nodding head; bed is for the second (Jade Wu). If you don't feel that yet, stay up a little longer in dim light.

"You would never sit at the dinner table waiting to get hungry, so why would you lie in bed waiting to get sleepy?" (Matthew Walker, Huberman Lab)

Sleepiness builds the longer you're awake. Wu says most adults need about 16 to 18 hours awake and out of bed to build up enough, and that early nights, lie-ins and naps all drain the store (Jade Wu). That's why an early night after a bad one can backfire.

5. Hide the clock

Checking the time when you can't sleep fuels stress, Walker says, because the arithmetic starts: if I fall asleep now, I'll get five hours. Now four and a half. Now four. In his words, "your brain becomes a calculator instead of a sleeper." Turn the clock around or put it in a drawer (The Matt Walker Podcast), and keep your phone face down, out of view (NHS).

6. Take your mind for a walk

Meditation, sleep stories and a gripping podcast work the same way, Walker says: they take your mind off itself, so the day's replays and tomorrow's to-do list can't crowd in (The Diary of a CEO). He describes a study by a Berkeley colleague in which counting sheep made people slower to fall asleep, while a mental walk worked better. Pick a route you know well, like the walk with your dog, and go through it in fine detail: out of the front door, left down the steps, past the pine tree. In his telling, people fell asleep in about half the time (Huberman Lab).

If pictures don't work for you, use your body. Walker suggests tensing and releasing your muscles from the feet upwards, with slow breathing: in for about four seconds, out for six or eight (The Matt Walker Podcast). Breus has people count backwards from 300 in threes, because "you cannot count and worry at the same time" (The Diary of a CEO).

What to do when you can't fall asleep

7. Get up after about 20 minutes

If you're still awake after around 20 minutes, the NHS advice is to get up, sit somewhere comfortable and do something relaxing, then go back to bed when you feel sleepy (NHS). The 20 minutes is a rough guide, so there's no need to check a clock to judge it. Keep the light dim, read or listen to a podcast, and skip email and snacks, because eating trains your brain to wake up for food. Walker's reason for getting up is that "your brain is an incredibly associative device": lie awake in bed often enough and it learns that bed is where you're awake. Go back only when you're sleepy, and he sets no time limit on that (Huberman Lab).

If it's the middle of the night rather than bedtime, our guide to waking up at 3am has a plan for those hours. What you do by day also shapes tonight: when you stop caffeine, how much you drink in the evening, and a steady wake time. Our guide to how to sleep better covers those habits, and we have separate posts on a caffeine cut-off and a fixed wake time.

Trouble falling asleep that has gone on for three months or more is worth taking to your GP or doctor, because long-term sleep problems have effective treatments (NHS).

Back to the landing

Walker's plane explains why quick tricks for falling asleep tend to disappoint: they all happen in the last minute of the descent. His steps spread the work across the evening, so that by the time you lie down, the only job left is to stop pushing. Some nights will still run late, and getting up on those nights keeps your bed tied to sleep.

"It's a little bit like trying to remember someone's name. The harder you try, the further you push it away." (Matthew Walker, The Diary of a CEO)

This article draws on Matthew Walker's interviews on Huberman Lab and The Diary of a CEO and on his own podcast, with the research, NHS guidance and other sleep experts listed below.

Which step matters most depends on your evenings. The free part of the 1h Protocol for Better Sleep asks a few questions about them, names the pattern behind your nights and gives you one first step. Start free before tonight's runway begins.

Frequently asked questions

How can I fall asleep in 10 minutes?

No method can promise it. Michael Breus says falling asleep normally takes about 12 to 15 minutes (The Diary of a CEO), and a 2023 review uses under 30 minutes as its mark of satisfactory sleep (Gardiner et al.). A warm shower, dim light and going to bed sleepy all shorten the wait.

What should I do if I'm not tired at bedtime?

Stay up a little longer and do something calm in dim light until you feel sleepy, with heavy eyelids and a nodding head. Then keep your usual wake time the next morning, so sleep drive builds for the following night (Jade Wu).

Does a warm shower help you fall asleep?

It can, if you time it well. A 2019 meta-analysis of 13 studies found that a shower or bath at 40 to 42.5 °C, one to two hours before bedtime, helped people fall asleep sooner, even after 10 minutes in the water. The evidence base is still small (Haghayegh et al.).

Does counting sheep work?

Probably not. Matthew Walker describes a study by a Berkeley colleague in which counting sheep made people slower to fall asleep, while picturing a familiar walk in detail helped (Huberman Lab). If you prefer numbers, Michael Breus suggests harder counting, such as backwards from 300 in threes (The Diary of a CEO).

Sources

This article is education, not medical advice.

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