Sleep Hygiene
Guide

Manage Your Environment

Make your sleep environment as comfortable as possible. Blackout curtains, earplugs, or a white noise machine can eliminate the sensory disruptions that ADHD brains are more likely to notice and fixate on. If light leaks or intermittent sounds pull your attention, address those first - environmental fixes require no willpower to maintain once they are in place.

Keep Your Bedroom Cool

A cooler room temperature - around 65-70°F (18-21°C) - supports better sleep. Your body needs to drop its core temperature to initiate sleep, and a warm room works against that process. This is a small change with an outsized effect.

Limit Caffeine and Sugar

Avoid caffeine and sugary snacks in the evening, particularly in the four to six hours before bedtime. Caffeine has a half-life of about five hours, which means a 4 PM coffee is still half-active at 9 PM. If you take stimulant medication, be aware that it compounds with caffeine to keep your system activated longer than either would alone.

Address Racing Thoughts

This is where most ADHD sleepers get stuck. The moment external stimulation stops, the internal monologue accelerates. Two strategies work well:

• Brain dump: Write down every thought, worry, and to-do item before getting into bed. The goal is not organization - it is getting the items out of working memory and onto paper so your brain can stop cycling through them.
• Scheduled worry time: Set aside 10-15 minutes earlier in the evening to deliberately think through concerns. When those thoughts surface at bedtime, you can tell yourself they have already been addressed.

The key principle: give your brain proof that nothing will be lost or forgotten by sleeping.

Establish a Consistent Sleep Schedule

Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. Consistency regulates your circadian rhythm, and for ADHD brains, external structure compensates for the internal time-awareness deficits that make bedtime feel negotiable. Set an alarm for bedtime, not just for waking up.

Limit Time in Bed Awake

If you cannot fall asleep within roughly 20 minutes, get up. Do something low-stimulation - read a physical book, fold laundry, listen to a calm podcast - until you feel genuinely drowsy. Lying in bed awake trains your brain to associate the bed with frustration and wakefulness rather than sleep. This is one of the most counterintuitive but effective practices on the list.

Create a Bedtime Routine

A consistent pre-sleep sequence signals to your brain that the transition to sleep has begun. Reading, gentle stretching, or a warm shower all work. The specific activities matter less than doing them in the same order at the same time each night. For ADHD brains, the routine itself is the cue - without it, the shift from "active" to "sleep" has no clear boundary.

Limit Screen Time

Avoid screens for at least one hour before bed. Blue light suppresses melatonin production, but the bigger issue for ADHD is the stimulation itself. Social media, news, and video content are designed to capture attention, and hyperfocus makes them especially difficult to disengage from at night. Replace screens with a physical book, an audiobook, or a non-screen activity that you can actually stop doing.

Keep a Sleep Diary

Track your sleep patterns daily: when you went to bed, when you actually fell asleep (estimate), when you woke up, and one or two notes about factors that helped or hurt. After two weeks, patterns become visible that you would not notice night-to-night. The diary is also concrete evidence for coaching conversations about what is working and what needs adjustment.

Eat for Sleep

What and when you eat affects sleep quality. Avoid heavy, spicy, or large meals within two to three hours of bedtime. If you need an evening snack, choose something light that combines protein and complex carbohydrates - a small serving of nuts, yogurt, or whole-grain crackers. Hunger can also keep you awake, so skipping dinner entirely is not the answer.