Want Better Sleep and More Self-Awareness? Try This 5-Minute Habit

Key Takeaways

• A sleep journal allows you to track details about your sleep habits and process feelings that come up for you throughout your slumber.
• While a sleep tracking app/tracker can be helpful for noticing your physical sleep patterns, a sleep journal takes into account your emotional patterns as well.
• If you’re having more significant sleeping problems, connect with a sleep specialist for your healthcare professional for guidance.

Feeling tired? You’re not alone. A third of adults in the United States aren’t getting enough sleep every day. Even more concerning is that almost 40% of adults are accidentally falling asleep throughout the day.

Even with sleeping routines that involve mindfulness, dimmed lighting, and an absence of blue light before bed, you still may feel the need for more. Luckily, we found a five-minute habit that can take your bedtime routine a step further: sleep journaling. 

What Is a Sleep Journal?

A sleep journal offers an opportunity to track details about your sleep habits and provide space for you to process feelings that come up for you throughout your experiences of sleeping. While a sleep tracking app prompts you to note when you fell asleep, when you woke up, and how often you woke up throughout the night, a sleep journal encourages you to go a step deeper. 

Your journaling experience will begin before you go to bed by exploring pre-bedtime prompts. These can be simple notes on feelings you’re having about unsuccessful attempts at sleeping. It can also be as general as how your day went and things you’re grateful for.

How Will Keeping a Sleep Journal Help Me?

A sleep journal will help you boost your sleep awareness. If you can learn more about your typical sleep behavior and triggers, you can take steps to get better sleep. While you’ll want to note basic details about when you go to bed and wake up, you will also want to note when you exercise, drink alcohol, and consume caffeine.

The main goal is to help your mind slow down, process any pre-sleep anxiety you’re having, and take in key data regarding your sleep throughout the night. You can then bring this data to your doctor and therapist to better understand your body and mind. Equipped with this information, your providers can help you ease into a more restful sleep routine.

Getting Started With a Sleep Journal

We’re here to help you get set up for journaling success. When getting started, format is key. A good format will help you stay organized and keep you engaged in your journal routine.

We recommend using a page just for sleep data. This is where you’ll note the times you had caffeine, alcohol, and exercised throughout the day. You will also jot down when you went to bed, what times you woke up throughout the night, and when you woke up for the day. Then, use another page to reflect on some journaling prompts.

Sleep Journal Prompts

We’ve included some of our favorite prompts for you to consider – you can stick to one every night or change it up based on what feels resonant day-to-day. 

What was your favorite part of the day? Least favorite?

This prompt is designed to have you process your day, allowing you to leave it behind before laying your head to rest.

Write down three things you’re grateful for.

Gratitude is clinically proven to boost health outcomes and lower inflammation.

What is your intention for tomorrow?

Allowing yourself to focus on the positive, especially the positive you’d like to bring in for the day ahead, may help you rest a bit more peacefully. 

Freestyle: Set a timer for five minutes and free write, taking note of everything on your mind.

Take anything that has the potential to become a racing thought and get it out onto the page. 

Getting a Routine in Place

Let’s explore some other habits you can implement alongside sleep journaling for a strong bedtime routine.

“As a psychotherapist, I emphasize that good sleep hygiene starts well before bedtime,” begins licensed marriage and family therapist and owner of Sagebrush Psychotherapy Ciara Bogdanovic. She recommends dimming lights, turning off screens 30 to 60 minutes before bed, and visualization techniques.

“One effective approach is to imagine thoughts as clouds drifting across the sky or as leaves floating down a stream,” she shares. As you rest in this visualization, you will simply observe the clouds or leaves rather than engaging with them. “This separation helps reduce mental activation and creates space for rest,” she continues. Try weaving this exercise in with the rest of your pre-bedtime activities.

Progress, Not Perfection

While sleep hygiene is important, don’t be too rigid, cautions sleep specialist Jessica Fink, LCSW-S, from Jessica Fink Therapy. “One of the biggest culprits in difficulty sleeping is something called sleep effort, which is essentially striving to sleep,” she explains. She continues by sharing that it is crucial to disengage when you attempt to fall asleep.

As soon as you begin exerting effort, you’re no longer disengaging. “Any seemingly healthy behavior (deep breathing, relaxation, meditation, etc.) can become sleep effort if applied with too much pressure,” she concludes. 

This ties in with an important caveat licensed professional counselor Kasryn Kapp from BodyMind Alliance Counseling shares. “Sleep hygiene is great for prevention, but for those with full-blown insomnia, focusing on sleep hygiene can backfire.” It is crucial to make sure you’re collaborating with a professional if you’re experiencing more significant sleep issues. They can help determine if your sleep concerns are insomnia and lead you to a better solution.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency.

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep.

3. Hazlett LI, Moieni M, Irwin MR, et al. Exploring neural mechanisms of the health benefits of gratitude in women: A randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2021;95:444-453. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2021.04.019

By Julia Childs Heyl, MSW

Julia Childs Heyl, MSW, is a clinical social worker and writer. As a writer, she focuses on mental health disparities and uses critical race theory as her preferred theoretical framework. In her clinical work, she specializes in treating people of color experiencing anxiety, depression, and trauma through depth therapy and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) trauma therapy.

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