How long does it take for you to fall asleep?

Probably about 5-10 minutes most of the time.

Your brain chatters to itself all the time, so if you stfu with the inner monologue and instead just try to eavesdrop on what's going on in the background, that leads pretty much directly into a dream state.

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interesting, i might try your suggestions

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Thats called WILD!

Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, hard to do but pretty cool if you can pull it off.

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Same, I have sleep tracks I listen to as well that usually start with a relax/disrupt your self-think exercise and then start describing a scene, like a train ride through pastures, this is not the same as leaving the TV or YouTube running, or an audiobook; it's intentionally boring and low engagement but it gives you something to focus on listening to so that you don't get caught up in your own thoughts, similar to the eavesdropping.

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- May I ask for some suggestions from your collection?
  
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- Interesting. I basically do this to myself by counting two breaths and repeating that count while focusing on the darkness behind my eyelids. If I catch my mind wandering I go back to the simple count and staring at my eyelids again. Works pretty well most of the time as I'm not picturing anything nor am I allowing my inner monologue to run away on me.
  
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Depends how stressful I am. Sometimes it's less than 5 minutes, other times I struggle to obtain the eepy stage even after 3 hours.

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Personally, I always find you extremely stressful

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Surprised I haven’t seen this response yet:

I say awake doing things until I am on the verge of passing out from being sleepy. If that means I only get 3 hours of sleep, then so be it.

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What if you don't feel that tired the whole night? Would you not sleep and go to work after that sleepless night?

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- Yuuuup. It’s happened at least once in the last month.
  
  Usually, though, I end up getting between 5-8 hours a night. (5hrs for the late nights, 8hrs for the next night when I’m so tired I could sleep in a warzone).
  
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Finally! Someone who does the same thing! People look at me like I’m crazy when I say I don’t have a sleep schedule. I let my body do the scheduling. Like you, when it comes to staying up all night, I just tell myself I’ll get some bomb ass sleep tonight. Lol

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My wife is appalled that I'm asleep the second i hit the pillow. She could be in mid conversation with me in bed then she'll just hear snoring.

It's a gift and a curse.

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Damn dude, what about cuddles and stuff :o

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- I'll fall asleep during the cuddles as well lol
  
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Anywhere between an hour or never. I have a small window of opportunity to fall asleep, if I miss it or my sleep gets disturbed, I’m screwed and there’s nothing I can do. I’ll just be tossing and turning the whole night. On work days I probably get about 5 hours of sleep, that goes to maybe 6.5 hours on the weekend.

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~1h, 30min if I'm lucky. And it have to be absolutely quiet or the timer will reset 🙃

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I'm sharing that pain with you.

On hot summer days, like now. I can find myself up for 2-3 hours due to the discomfort.

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I don’t get in bed until I feel my sleeping pill kick in, so not long

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Minutes, to hours, to not sleeping at all. It sucks.

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Ages 0-38: one hour to 3 days, sleep 1-4hrs/session.

Ages 39+: 5-10 minutes. Sleep 7hrs/session.

I'm so tired all the time now.

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I don't understand the first part.

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- They mean they sometimes went multiple days without being able to fall asleep.
  
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You guys sleep?

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Usually about 20min? I set a sleep timer on podcasts for 30 min and i usually don't hear it stop.

When i can't fall asleep quickly, it's maybe an hour? Eventually sleep happens.

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before ritalin: 2 to 5 hours, or not at all

after ritalin: 15 minutes.

note I take the ritalin during the day, not to go to sleep

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Usually 5-10 minutes

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Fast. It’s staying asleep that’s the hard part.

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An hour maybe to get some light sleep, and I can't get to deep sleep until 5 AM easily.

I remember a few years ago that suddenly this topic came up with friends, and turns out almost everyone sleeps nicely after 1-5 minutes in bed.

And I thought my case was normal (it's been like this since I was a kid). But I've been probably losing years of life without a way to gain them back. Depressing.

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The time it takes to fall asleep is called sleep latency, and mine is also around an hour so you're not alone. In my case I blame a combination of ADHD and Aspergers, which means that my brain literally always wants to think about interesting stuff rather than quiet down. For about 10 years now I've been using ASMR videos as a sleep aid and it helps immensely. I use the ones with people talking and it totally occupies the speech centre of my brain, cutting off my brains ability to keep thinking about whatever interesting thing it wants to think about (it's hard to think complex thoughts while also trying to absorb what someone is saying)

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If it makes you feel better, I also take about an hour most nights to go to sleep.

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20 seconds. I’ve got 4 kids.

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When I am stressed , atsleast 3-4 hours but when I am not usually within 30mins.

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Some nights 15 minutes and annoyingly frequently 1-3 hours. It used to really worry me, but I've learned to make peace with it.

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Probably about half an hour or so.

Occasionally get a bad night where it takes me 2 or 3 hours to get to sleep. But it’s only if I’ve had a bad day in work or something that my head won’t quiet down about but it’s pretty rare and i can usually sort it out with some white noise earphones

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Too long. I just can't not process things that happened, interactions with people, all that stuff. I'm not sure I even want to just drop when I finally have the time to thinks stuff before sleep.

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Fuckin hours wooooooooooooo!

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Initial bedtime sleep takes a few minutes or so. If i wake during the night, it could take me hours to go back to sleep. If this is a daytime nap, that takes me like 20 minutes.

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It takes me an hour or so !! Once i am in bed , i play some video and fall asleep to it !

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Man, too long. Chronic pain has me in bed by 9pm, but it takes hours to actually fall asleep. Even with the sleepy meds..

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If I'm really tired, sometimes I'll just dose off in the midd

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Once I put the Skyrim OST on it’s usually within two songs but sometimes it’s all the place.

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It usually tak... Zzz zzz zzz

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3 to 10 minutes, depends how sleepy I am

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Less than a minute.

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Same. Get owned, everyone else.

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Usually like 5 minutes or less.

I sleep worst when I have to get up extremely early and would benefit by falling asleep as early as possible. In situations like that, it takes me about two hours to fall asleep.

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Usually 10 minutes. Reading a book helps if it's taking longer.

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Usually between 6 and 8 hours

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Maybe 2 minutes normally. Hard to tell really. If I don't I have two strategies:

If I'm staying awake because of some captivating train of thought (stressfull or exciting or whatever) I mentally put it aside with the thought "I can't change that right now anyway I can deal with it tomorrow" and start trying to freely associate without focusing on any thought starting from some nice landscapes.

Otherwise if there isn't something obvious keeping me from sleep, I just start focusing on relaxing bodyparts and breathing deeply and slowly to stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system. That normally puts me out quickly.

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It happens instantaneously. After some waiting.

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Anywhere between 7 minutes and 3 days.

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Sometimes two hours.

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I have discovered audio books can help me fall asleep in minutes. Just set the timer to shut off in an hour.

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Same here.

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10 to 20 minutes if I am not super tired.

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As far as I can tell most nights I fall asleep immediately. Occasionally I'll have some trouble but not so often that I can remember the last time.

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Typically <10 minutes, but under <5 quite frequently. If I get woken up in the middle of the night or very early morning, good luck. I have such a hard time falling back asleep as I get older.

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Less than 30 min if I turn the TV sleep timer on 30 min and listen to something quiet/boring. Not sure that's the best way to do it, but it works.

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On a good night 30 mins but average about an hour or 2

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Idk I don't tend to look at the clock when I fall asleep, but I do know that whenever I accidentally fall asleep while watching, say, a PBS spacetime video, I pass out for no less then about an hour

Also I have no clue how the other people here figure out how long it takes them to go to sleep, because as far as I know, looking at the clock just keeps you awake for longer

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You can test yourself at the expense of actually getting sleep. As you settle to sleep set a timer and hold a teaspoon (or similar metal object) in your hand hanging out of the side of the bed over a metal tray. When you fall asleep the spoon will slip from your hand and clatter, causing you to wake. You can then check how long that took.

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10ish minutes. Less if im tired. Never if im not tired.

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Over the last few months I've worked hard on teaching myself to fall asleep. I take 5 breaths to think about how comfortable i am - or to get comfortable if I'm not. Then i focus hard on relaxing each body part for 3 breaths, beginning at my feet and pushing out any other thoughts. I rarely make it past my knees.

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I turn on a YouTube video in the background and pass out before it’s even through the intro. That’s about 2 minutes generally.

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Five or ten minutes; but that's called Ambien, and only if I hide my phone from myself.

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As long as it takes.

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Like 5 min. But then I typically only try to fall asleep when I'm actually getting sleepy or when I'm edging close to some 6h of sleep until the alarm goes off, at which point I'm usually already pretty tired even though I hadn't been aware before.

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5 minutes is pretty damn low: are you sleep depraved? If so, you must be exhausted at the end of the day or constantly tired throughout the day. The average and normal time (when just being tired and not exhausted at the end of the day) is about 20 minutes. You might want to checked on that and get a better sleep quality as you seem to say you have 6 hours of sleep per day, which isn't ideal but good enough.

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- Well I certainly don't feel tired during the day or exhausted at the end of it. I also sleep in on weekends and basically feel the same as during weekdays so I think I'm good
  
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Over time I've developed a fear of that self reflective laying in bed trying to sleep time especially as when I get into negative thinking it keeps me awake far longer, sometimes hours of ever increasing torment so I find myself unable to go to bed before I'm tired enough to fall asleep quickly - generally that involves distracting myself with social media, YouTube, video games, porn, or even work but then I'm tired the next day and spend most the day sitting around distracting myself on my phone trying to avoid that limbo of guilt and negative thinking when I'm not awake enough to be productive.

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Between <1-3 minutes. Occasionally I’ll feel a little restless but still manage to fall asleep in 10-15 minutes. I’m just always tired :/

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99% of the time, 5 to 10 mins and I'm out for the count. A marching band could walk through my bedroom and I wouldn't have a clue.

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Usually within a couple of minutes unless something is triggering my anxiety, which hasnt happened in years thankfully. Otherwise I can pretty much turn my sleep on/off at will

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