Sleep Starts Before Bedtime
A New mySleepButton Routine
All of CogSci Apps’s current mySleepButton packs are designed to be used in bed, to help you fall asleep. But there is a problem with focusing only on bedtime. By the time you get into bed, your mind may already be carrying unresolved concerns, plans, and emotional residue from the day. These can build into what I call mental perturbance—a state in which thoughts and concerns become insistent and harder to disengage from. At that point, even good sleep-onset techniques can be working against a headwind.
For mySleepButton 2.0, I am therefore designing a new kind of pack: an early-evening cognitive routine.
Instead of trying to settle the mind at the last minute, this pack is meant to help you clear, organize, and gently reframe your thoughts earlier in the evening—so that when you get into bed, your mind is already in a more sleep-conducive state.
This new pack draws on CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), and MCT (metacognitive therapy). It combines three evidence-based practices:
1. Gratitudes
The pack begins by inviting you to list five things you are grateful for—on paper, out loud, or in your mind.
Ideally, at least one of these is something that someone else might be grateful to you for.
You are encouraged to pause the audio while doing this.
This simple exercise can shift attentional and evaluative processes away from concerns and toward appreciation, helping to rebalance the cognitive-emotional tone of the evening.
2. Concern-processing protocol
Next, the pack invites you to list things you are worried about, along with how you intend to deal with them.
This is based on structured “constructive worry” techniques used in CBT for insomnia (e.g., Carney et al.). I don’t call it “constructive worry” because that’s an oxymoron. Worrying is not constructive, as any good Stoic will tell you 😉.
The key idea is to externalize and contain concerns earlier in the evening, rather than allowing them to surface repeatedly at bedtime.
Again, you can pause the pack while doing this.
3. Therapeutic metaphors
Finally, the pack presents short therapeutic concepts drawn from CBT and ACT, each illustrated with multiple metaphors.
For example:
Anxiety is like a thermostat stuck on high
Struggling with thoughts is like sinking in quicksand
Repetitive worrying is like repeatedly testing a locked door
These metaphors are not just explanatory—they are designed to help you relate differently to your thoughts and feelings, promoting cognitive defusion and reducing the tendency to get caught up in them.
The metaphors are presented in a style similar to the cognitive shuffle, but organized into meaningful conceptual groupings.
I will also be publishing a companion book that expands on these packs, including a bibliography of supporting research. While the book will be accessible to end-users, it will also serve as a bridge to the scientific literature underlying these practices.
This new type of pack represents a shift for mySleepButton: from a tool used only at bedtime, to a system that supports the entire cognitive ecology of sleep onset.