Researchers at Baylor University have recently demonstrated that writing a “to-do” list before bed may reduce the amount of time it takes to fall asleep.
“We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime,” Michael K. Scullin, lead author, director of Baylor’s Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory and assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in a statement.
“Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract nighttime difficulties with falling asleep.”
The full study is published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology.
In the study, 57 healthy students between the ages 18 and 30 were given a writing assignment to work on for five minutes before going to bed. To test the effects of different kinds of writing on sleep onset latency, participants were divided into two groups. One group was told to write a list of activities they intended to complete over the next few days, while the other group was assigned a journal entry about tasks they had recently completed.
Researchers found that participants who created “to-do” lists fell asleep significantly faster than those who wrote about completed activities.
Participants’ sleep patterns were observed using a method called overnight polysomnography, which uses electrodes to monitor brain activity during sleep.
The students slept in Baylor’s Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory over a weekday night. They were kept in a controlled environment with no access to technology and homework and instructed to go to sleep at 10:30 p.m.
The study also found that participants who wrote more detailed “to-do” lists tended to fall asleep faster.
“Our study indicates that both the content and quantity of one’s writing is important,” said Scullin.
Writing 10 or more to-do list items seems to help some people fall asleep faster.
On the other hand, participants who wrote more detailed entries about completed activities tended to have more trouble falling asleep. However, journaling does not likely have a negative effect on sleep.
“We did find a small trend for people who journaled more to take a little more time to fall asleep, but that pattern didn’t exceed normal statistical recommendations for reliability,” said Scullin. “So it’s probably ok to journal, but if you’re not also writing out your to-do list you shouldn’t expect journaling to help you fall asleep faster.”
In order to avoid placebo effects, the study did not compare these results to a group that did not complete any writing assignment before going to sleep.
“Past research on writing has been criticized for comparing a writing group to a group in which people know they’re not doing anything, thus potentially leading to participant and experimenter expectation biases,” Scullin said. “I would expect that no writing would lead to similar sleep outcomes as the completed activity group.”
While the study involved a sample size that was appropriate for a lab-based study, the sample is too small to indicate how generalizable are the findings. A larger sample study would be needed to establish this.
“Measures of personality, anxiety and depression might moderate the effects of writing on falling asleep, and that could be explored in an investigation with a larger sample,” Scullin said in a statement. “We recruited healthy young adults, and so we don’t know whether our findings would generalize to patients with insomnia, though some writing activities have previously been suggested to benefit such patients.”
