Scientists have an idea to help us get to sleep faster. All you need is a pen and paper. The scientists looked at how we can fall asleep more quickly. Writing a to-do list helps people get to sleep faster. The researchers said to-do lists help us to relax because we don't need to worry about things we have to do. If we write down the things we have to do, we can forget about them. This makes us calmer. A researcher said: "We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime."
The researchers looked at the sleeping patterns of 57 university students aged between 18 and 30. Half of them wrote down a to-do list five minutes before they slept. They had to sleep by 10:30pm and could not use technology. The participants who wrote to-do lists fell asleep an average of 9 minutes faster than those who didn't. They also found that the students who wrote detailed lists fell asleep faster than students who wrote simple lists. The National Sleep Foundation said that around 40 per cent of adults have difficulty falling asleep a few times each month.