This information is intended for people who have to stay indoors for an extended period of time. If you are sleep deprived because of lack of opportunity to sleep (e.g., frontline health professionals, support workers, caregivers), please prioritize sleep and rest as much as you are able to.

Prevent and tackle signs of insomnia

Having some nights when you don’t sleep well during a stressful period is expected. The recommendations below can help prevent turning one night’s poor sleep into many nights of insomnia.

What to do after a poor night’s sleep?

  • Get up at the same time as you usually do. It sounds counterintuitive. However, staying in bed longer to catch up on lost sleep could negatively affect your body clock (see above) so it does not optimally support your sleep. Also, waking up later than usual could make it even harder to sleep well the following night. It might comfort you to know that our body makes up for sleep loss by sleeping deeper, which is as important as sleeping longer.
  • Go to bed the following night around or after your usual bedtime. This means not going to bed too early. If we go to bed much earlier, it could make getting to sleep even harder. Even if you fall asleep fast, you are likely to have more wakefulness in the middle of the night or wake up too early.
  • Remain active and avoid/minimize napping during the day. If you are so tired that you unintentionally doze off, take a brief catnap (10-20 minutes). Otherwise, skip naps during the day, unless you are in a situation where sleep deprivation is a safety issue.
  • Worrying about sleep makes it harder to sleep. After a poor night’s sleep, it’s understandable to think “how am I going to sleep well tonight?”, “how can I cope with not sleeping well?”. These thoughts actually make us feel more anxious around sleep and bedtime and make sleep harder. Try telling yourself: “I can’t force myself to sleep. Let me focus on relaxing each part of my body, and rest. Sleep will come at its own time.”
  • Trust your body’s sleep system. When you lose that trust and become overly concerned about sleep, you make it harder for your sleep system to do its job.

What to do when you cannot get to sleep?

  • The best thing to do is to take a break from trying to sleep. Most of us have been through nights when we toss and turn, our mind racing, and we are feeling frustrated that sleep just does not come. Your experience probably tells you that trying harder does not make sleep come any faster. Paradoxically, it is better to take a break from trying and come back to it later, when you feel that your level of alertness went down. During this “reset” break, you can do something quiet, such as reading or listening to audio content that is not too activating.
  • Focus on getting yourself into a relaxed state of mind and focus on resting. When you worry about sleep, you are not resting. When you try hard to sleep, you are also not resting. Taking a break from trying to sleep will allow you to shift your attention away from making this effort. When you let go of efforts to sleep and focus on resting, your sleep system can take better care of your sleep need.

Healthy sleeping habits to minimize the impact of isolation on sleep

  • The best time to go to bed is when it’s around your usual bedtime (not too early, not too late), and when you are feeling that “wave” of sleepiness is arriving. For some people this may feel like alertness is lower, eyelids are heavy, and thoughts are slowing down. Learn to “surf the waves” of sleepiness, and “catch” it as your bedtime helps fall asleep quickly.
  • Unwind at least an hour before bed. This helps prepare your body and mind for rest and sleep.
  • Do not attempt to sleep when you are alert, fully awake, or distressed. If it is your bedtime and you are feeling this way, take more time to unwind your body and mind before trying to sleep.
  • The bed is for sleep and sex, not wake activities. It’s tempting to move the laptop, phone, TV, and even meals into the bedroom and onto the bed. But doing this could trick our brain into thinking that the bed is a place for waking activities, not sleep. Over time, our brain learns to be more awake, and not sleepy in bed. Keeping bed and bedroom for sleep and sex is a super-helpful thing to do when you spend an extended period of time indoors. If you have limited space, and have to use bed or bedroom, you could allocate one side of the bed or bedroom for sleep only, and go to other parts when you are awake. Only do this if you truly have no other options for daytime activities.
  • Be wise with the use of substances. Avoid caffeine at least 6 hours before bedtime; cigarettes are alerting, so avoid it in the evening; reduce alcohol – you may feel drowsy after drinking it, but it disturbs your sleep during the second half of the night, not at all helpful for sleep.

When to get professional help?

If your sleep problems persist for a while, happening on more days than not, severely interfere with what you do during the day, or you are very concerned or distressed about them, it’s a good idea to check with your physician. Most sleep problems respond well to treatments. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is a highly effective non-drug treatment for insomnia, the most common sleep disorder.

This article was written by Drs Bei Bei, Shantha Rajaratnam, and Sean Drummond from Monash University Healthy Sleep Clinic, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Australia, and Dr Rachel Manber from Sleep Health and Insomnia Program, Stanford University, USA. You may share this information freely with acknowledgement of the source. Contribution to this via Github is welcome. For questions and comments, please contact [email protected].

Authored by:

Drs. Bei Bei, Shantha Rajaratnam, Sean Drummond, and Rachel Manber