Insomnia is genuinely awful. You're exhausted, you're lying in bed, and you're fully awake. Your brain starts running through everything you did wrong, everything you need to do tomorrow, and why you can't get to sleep, which of course makes it worse. And then everyone's advice is "try melatonin" or "put your phone away."
Look, those things aren't wrong. But they're not the full picture. A proper night routine for insomnia is built on sleep science, specifically on the mechanisms that govern sleep onset and sleep architecture. Here's what actually works.
Insomnia is almost always driven by hyperarousal: the nervous system is in a mild fight-or-flight state when it needs to be in rest-and-digest. This can be caused by stress, anxiety, bad sleep habits, ADHD, poor light exposure, caffeine timing, or alcohol (which sedates but destroys sleep architecture). Often it's a combination.
Over time, insomnia compounds itself. You associate the bed with wakefulness and anxiety about sleep, which makes it harder to sleep, which increases that association. The night routine for insomnia has to break this cycle.
Bright artificial light suppresses melatonin production. Start dimming your environment 90 minutes before your target sleep time. Use lamps instead of overhead lights. This is one of the most impactful single changes in a night routine for insomnia, especially for people who've spent years in bright light until the moment they try to sleep.
Take 5-10 minutes to write down everything on your mind: tomorrow's tasks, worries, things you need to remember. This externalizes the cognitive load that would otherwise cycle through your head at 2am. Research on this "worry expulsion" technique shows measurable improvement in sleep onset time.
Screen blue light specifically suppresses melatonin and keeps your nervous system activated. 60 minutes before bed without screens is ideal. If that's not achievable, blue light glasses can mitigate but don't fully compensate. Low-light phone use in dark mode with the screen dimmed is better than bright phone in a dark room.
This sounds counterintuitive for sleep, but the mechanism is: warm water raises skin temperature, your body compensates by dilating blood vessels and releasing heat, and your core body temperature drops. That core temperature drop is a key trigger for sleep onset. A 10-minute warm shower 45-60 minutes before bed speeds up this process.
Reading physical books, light stretching, non-competitive crosswords, calm podcast in dim light. The goal is something engaging enough to stop anxious thought loops but not stimulating enough to raise arousal. This is a personal question: find what works for you. Avoid anything that generates emotions (news, drama series, social media, work).
3-5 rounds of the physiological sigh (double inhale, long exhale) or a 5-minute progressive muscle relaxation directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Your heart rate lowers, cortisol drops, and the conditions for sleep onset are met. 5 minutes is enough.
Target room temperature around 67F/19C. Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask. And critically: don't use the bed for anything but sleep and sex. No phone in bed, no TV in bed, no working in bed. This is stimulus control therapy, the single most evidence-supported behavioral insomnia treatment.
The most important variable is consistency of timing. Your body learns to prepare for sleep when you consistently start the same sequence at the same time. The first week will feel like it doesn't work. By week 3-4, the conditioned association starts to form.
ADHD specifically complicates insomnia because ADHD brains have delayed circadian rhythm, hyperarousal at bedtime, and difficulty transitioning out of hyperfocus states. The night routine for insomnia with ADHD needs extra transition time (start 2 hours before bed), explicit shutdown rituals to signal the end of "ADHD time," and may need to address medication timing with your prescribing physician.
Anchor + Novelty Activities, consistent structure with enough variety to keep your brain engaged. Free to download.
Download Free