The decision

This chapter asks you to decide something. It comes late because at the start it would have sounded like "just stop worrying at night", which you've told yourself a hundred times. By now you've seen why the hour is wrong and that the verdicts are unreliable. You've seen that nothing can be acted on from bed, and that the thinking is what keeps you awake. You've also seen that the problems can have a proper place in the day. So here's the decision.

I don't work on problems between bedtime and breakfast. They get ten minutes in the evening and my best hour in the day.

Here's what it involves.

The handover, every evening. As in chapter 12. Take ten minutes at a table, on paper, with a next step and a time against each item. Close the book when you've finished.

A proper session for big things. Book it in daylight, with a start time and an end time.

No clock and no phone within reach. As in chapter 9.

The pad by the bed. A new item gets one line and no more.

The night routine. As in chapter 13. Name it, answer it once, go to the imagery, rest, and get up if it isn't working.

No verdicts before breakfast. As in chapter 5. Anything concluded in the night gets looked at again in the morning before it counts. Don't act on any of it before breakfast. That means no emails, no messages and no decisions.

Plans of the "when this, then that" kind make a decision like this much more likely to hold at three in the morning, when you won't be at your most resolute. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of such plans and found that they made people a good deal more likely to follow through. Here are three, which you can adapt.

When I wake in the night and a problem arrives, then I'll say "three o'clock mind, it's on the list" and go to the house.

When I catch myself doing sums about how much sleep I'll get, then I'll say "it's night" and go to the house.

When I've been lying there getting frustrated, then I'll get up and read in the other room until I'm sleepy.

The first plan uses the arrival of the problem as its own cue. Until now that arrival has been the start of the shift, and from here on it triggers the label.

Here's what to expect, and I'll be careful, because I can't promise you an outcome. The handover tends to help within the first week. The night routine takes longer, because you're changing a reflex, and for the first fortnight you'll often find yourself ten minutes into a shift before you notice. That's normal. Notice, label it, and go to the house. With time you'll catch it sooner. Expect to get out of bed a fair amount in the early weeks, and to find it a nuisance. Over a month or two I'd expect fewer long wakings, and shorter ones. I'd also expect a marked drop in the number of grim conclusions you reach about your life. I can't promise that you'll sleep through. You may go on waking in the night for the rest of your life, as people always have. What I'd expect to change is what happens afterwards, which is a few quiet minutes in the dark and then, mostly, sleep.

I also can't promise that your problems will get smaller, since they're real. But they'll be dealt with by you at the kitchen table in the morning, and you'll handle them far better there than you did at three.