A two-minute evening journal for better sleep

Lying awake replaying the day, or running through tomorrow’s list, is one of the most common reasons people can’t switch off at night. A couple of small studies suggest that a few minutes with a pen before bed can help.

What the sleep lab found

In 2018, researchers at Baylor University brought 57 young adults into a sleep lab. Before bed, half of them spent five minutes writing a to-do list for the next few days. The other half wrote about tasks they’d already finished.

The to-do group fell asleep faster: about 16 minutes on average, compared with 25. The more specific their lists, the faster they fell asleep. The researchers’ explanation is that writing tasks down “off-loads” them, so your mind doesn’t have to keep holding on.

It’s one small study in healthy students, and the authors were careful to say it may not apply to people with insomnia. But it’s a cheap, harmless thing to try.

Gratitude and sleep

Gratitude journaling has been linked to sleep too. In a well-known 2003 study by Emmons and McCullough, people who kept a gratitude journal reported more positive moods and optimism, and some groups reported better sleep than the comparison groups. These were self-reports, so treat them as encouraging rather than proof, but they point in the same direction.

A two-minute routine

Put the two ideas together and you get a short evening ritual:

1. Close the day (one minute). Write three short lines about today: what happened, what was good, how you felt. This gives the day an ending.
2. Park tomorrow (one minute). Jot the two or three things on your mind for tomorrow, as specifically as you can. Now they’re on paper, not on loop.
3. Put the phone down. Make the journal the last thing you do, not the start of more scrolling.

Make it automatic

The hardest part of any evening habit is remembering it. A reminder at the same time each night helps it become automatic. 3 Lines A Day sends one gentle reminder in the evening, at the time you choose, so closing the day takes less than a minute.

Sources: Scullin, M. K., Krueger, M. L., Ballard, H. K., Pruett, N., & Bliwise, D. L. (2018). The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(1), 139–146. Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.