Sleep Effort and Clock-Watching: The Trying-Too-Hard Paradox

Summary

Sleep is an **involuntary** process you can't will into happening — so the harder you try to fall asleep, the more you monitor whether it's working, and the more you check the clock, the **more aroused and awake you become**; the paradoxical fix is to *stop trying* (paradoxical intention), turn the clock away, and let sleep arrive on its own rather than chasing it. ---