What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect.

I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain that has associated falling asleep to the sound of a voice speaking.

My girlfriend trained herself to sleep with movies. Now she can't watch movies without falling asleep.

Mine does exactly the same thing. If she's on the couch watching a movie, she's a goner, but the moment she moves to bed, "it's too loud! Turn it down!" even when it's at 1/10th of the volume when she was drooling on the couch.

I did the same thing with books. I always used to read before I went to sleep. Now, I get tired reading.

It was imperative for an ex girlfriend of mine to have a movie on; or she was unable to sleep. I prefer total darkness so that my body gains the maximum recuperative benefit.

Bob Ross videos on Hulu or YouTube are the most pleasant and soothing things I've ever watched. They usually knock me out in just a few minutes. And if you still can't fall asleep, you got to watch someone paint a pretty landscape.

There's a podcast that's literally just this. Some guy reads nonsensical stories in a monotone.

10 minutes or less, guaranteed, every time.

I need an URI for that.

This is it (I believe): http://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

I have been using audiobooks frequently to help me fall asleep. For me it has to be the right tone of voice and not a high pitched voicy or jerky style enunciation.

I use Sleep With Me podcast and like you said it shuts my thinking and then I sleep within few minutes. I highly recommend it.

https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

I start a random YouTube video and set SleepTimer [1] app to 15 minutes. The beauty of the app is that it softly fades the volume to 0 and turns the screen off by the end of 15 minutes. It has always helped me fall asleep!

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pboos.andro...

There's a couple youtube channels of Go game commentary and strategy lectures that does something similar for me.

BBC's In Our Time podcast is an instant sedative. Roundtable of British academics dryly discussing historical topics. 5 mins and I'm out like a light.

Are you an Englishperson in San Francisco by any chance?

No, sorry. Originally from the East Coast.

Oh yeah. I think it's almost like there's a really active part of my brain that does programming... If I wake up in the middle of the night, if I start thinking about my latest project, bam, I'm wide awake and going back to sleep is way off.

It's almost like the old crock of "you only use 10% of your brain"... when I wake up, I'm on 10% mode, but programming thoughts spin up the whole engine.

And the great thing is that this technique helps even falling asleep in such situations for me. Its like imitating breathing, like you would be fully asleep and the real sleep follows.

You should be aware that this allows me to ignore and procrastinating on pressing issues which I should face head-on. But practicing meditation in the mornings helps with that.

I've noticed that too and I make it a point to stop programming or doing anything that requires stimulating brain activity for at least an hour before going to bed.

Try watching a good show that doesn't require too much attention an hour or two before your bedtime. Putting your brain into a passive mode helps a lot. (Do not watch Game of Thrones or any complex/stimulating show or it probably won't help!)

I have constant thoughts going through my head, similar to what you describe. No inspection/introspection/reflection on my conscious mind works for me (counting, drifting meditation), so I use audiobooks to fall asleep.

I have trouble sleeping but it's unpredictable. It's not always, and it usually goes that way for period of time, then I don't have trouble for a period.

I usually don't lose my focus and drift off, instead it's like I'm listening carefully, then I instantly wake up the next morning. It's like a hard stop and I lose a chunk of progress in the book. I'll do anything to fall asleep so I don't mind that.

I've tried it all, I can lay in bed and think about nothing for hours, I'm pretty good at it, and have been doing it for a long time. It's not enough to just 'not have thoughts'.

Also, I never remember my dreams. I can still remember 2-3 nightmares I have had over the years. They are very rare. Never dreams though.

If you want to fall asleep, just start doing something you've been putting off for a while. You'll feel sleepy in minutes.

Yup. Same thing happened to me. If i program really hard for many hours right before bed, it seriously prevents me from falling as sleep. The solution is to meditate for a little while before bed or read a light magazine.

And youtube is awesome with it's 6 hour meditation music: to help you do meditation.

Sounds like homebrew Pranayama

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

I've tried this trick as well before, but it does not work all the time for me. Maybe I am just not disciplined enough in refocusing my attention to breathing. I discovered this trick when I was reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" where parts of the book teaches about proper meditation.

I already have sleeping problems before, as I like to be occupied with something before going to bed at 11 or 12 pm. Normally, I would either program, write a blog or a chapter, or read an interesting book that I have been putting off for a while. My problem then was sleeping for only 6 hours, and I wanted to sleep 7.5 ~ 8 hours.

So I decided to switch it, by sleeping earlier (8 am) and doing these other things after I wake up at 4 am. This only worsened, as now I am having issues falling asleep. Tricks that I tried that worked only initially were counting, listening to music, having a hot shower, meditation, etc.

The first time I tried counting, I fell asleep before the count of 10, but on the second night, I was still awake past 30 and getting worried as it getting higher and higher and I am not asleep yet. So I changed it on the third night by repeating "one" until I fall asleep. That worked, but the following night, it was not as effective, as my thoughts just drifted on what happened during the day.

I've tried listening to music. Norah Jones' songs really worked for me for a few nights, but afterwards, the songs became a distraction, as I am now just listening to them and waiting for sleep to fall for hours.

I've tried to clear my head of racing thoughts, but after the thoughts are gone, I hear something like bubbles popping inside my head, which carry on endlessly and keeps me awake. Same with taking hot showers.

Later on I learned that my sleep problems is due to timing, since starting sleep at 8pm is within the "forbidden zone". It also does not help that my gym time is from 5 PM to 7 PM and have dinner afterwards.

I've move my bed time to 9 ~ 10 PM but my sleeping problems persisted. I think it has now become akin to performance anxiety.

I've tried 4-7-8 technique last night, but I find myself gasping for breath trying to hold it for 7 counts, plus the swooshing sound on 8 counts is too distracting when I exhale.

I am still looking for a technique that will work every time. I think I should have a log of my sleeping habits and what worked and what didn't and what things I did preceding the sleep. I'm considering purchasing a sleep tracker like Dreem just to automate sleep quality logging, and see if I could come up with something that works for me.