Our brains have terrible timing. At 3 p.m., when you need to answer emails, you would likely be happy to crawl under your desk and take a nap. However, at 11:30 p.m., when the lights are off and you’re finally horizontal, suddenly your brain wants to workshop every unresolved issue in your life. This is not thinking — this is your brain opening 37 tabs and then refusing to tell you which one is playing audio. If this describes your sleep pattern, you’re not alone. According to the CDC, 30.5% of adults get less than 7 hours sleep in a 24-hour period, and 15.4% have trouble falling asleep most days. The brain’s threat-detection system often stays on because it’s trying to solve problems, and that's why Dr. Luc Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist, came up with a trick that’s extremely successful. The basic idea is to give your brain a stream of random, easy-to-picture images to focus on as you’re falling asleep. Start with a simple, boring word that has at least five letters — something like “cloud.” Then, take the first letter of that word and think of random words that begin with it. So, for cloud, you could start with cactus, cup, cabbage, cowboy. Then move to lamp, lemon, lake, ladder, and so on. The words should have no connection. You’re not telling yourself a bedtime story. The whole point is to keep the images random enough that your brain can’t turn them into a plot. You can use foods, animals, objects or anything that comes easily. Cognitive shuffling works because it gives your brain just enough to do, but not enough to keep you awake. While cognitive shuffling is not an express lane to perfect sleep, it is a tiny mental detour for the nights when your brain will not stop narrating, and that can make all the difference.
