I woke up at 3:43 one morning. After an hour of lying awake in the dark, I moved to the sofa and read my book for an hour. Then I turned off the light and went back to sleep.
Middle-of-the-night awakenings are common for many people, and how we deal with this habit is key to getting a good sleep, says sleep expert Michael Grandner, a psychologist at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. It turns out that I made a couple of mistakes that might have kept me from going back to sleep more quickly: I shouldn’t have looked at my clock, and I shouldn’t have waited so long to get out of bed.
Looking at the clock leads to two things antithetical to sleep, Grandner says — math and worry. You are bound to calculate how many hours of sleep you’ve gotten and how many are left, thereby triggering daytime brain functions. You are likely to then start worrying about being tired tomorrow as you tackle a long to-do list, thereby activating stress.
Staying in bed while awake trains you to associate your bed with wakefulness rather than sleep, Grandner says.