Want a better night's sleep? Do this one trick, say psychologists

If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s that most people could do with more sleep.

Long hours, tiring commutes and round-the-clock responsibilities mean that often people get to bed late and often lie awake worrying about the following day, meaning they miss precious hours to rejuvenate.

In a new study conducted by researchers in the US, however, it's been found that there may be a seriously simple trick to ensure that you get the sleep as fast as you can.

Michael K. Scullin and other psychologists from Baylor University in Texas took 57 people, all aged between 18 and 30, and split the group in two to monitor their sleep in a lab overnight.

One group was asked to write a list of everything that they’d achieved in the last few days before going to sleep and the other was asked to write down what their to-do lists were over the coming days. The whole group was then sent to bed “in a controlled environment” (no technology allowed and lights turned off at 10.30pm) and it was found that those who had written their to-do list for the coming days fell asleep on average nine minutes earlier than those that had created the alternative list.

The scientists aren’t 100 percent sure why people responded so well to writing their to-do lists - some worried that preempting future tasks would actually stress people out more - but it’s thought the practice of “offloading” tasks allowed people to feel more in control and relaxed which is conducive to falling asleep. Scullin, however, does recognise a larger experiment would need to be undertaken to deliver conclusive results.

"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," explains Scullin.

He adds, "We recruited healthy young adults, and so we don't know whether our findings would generalise to patients with insomnia, though some writing activities have previously been suggested to benefit such patients."

One thing's for sure, we're certainly writing our to-do list before lights off tonight - we'd try just about anything for a better night's sleep.