Psychologists say writing tomorrow's to-do list before bed is not overplanning, but may help you fall asleep faster by clearing unfinished tasks from your mind, according to researchers at Baylor University

It's 11 pm. You’re in bed, phone finally face-down, and your brain decides this is the perfect time to remind you about the email you forgot to send and the dentist appointment you keep putting off. Sounds familiar?

According to the study, ‘The Effects of Bedtime Writing on Difficulty Falling Asleep: A Polysomnographic Study Comparing To-Do Lists and Completed Activity Lists,’ from Baylor University's Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory, there's a surprisingly low-effort fix: write down your to-do list instead of replaying it in your head before you turn off the lights.

The five-minute experiment behind the headline
Psychologist Michael K. Scullin, who directs the lab, wanted to test something a lot of people already do when they’re stressed: write it down and see if it helps. In the same Baylor study, 57 healthy young adults spent a weekday night in a controlled sleep lab, going to bed at 10:30 pm with no phones or homework allowed and being monitored with overnight polysomnography, the brain-wave-tracking technology used in clinical sleep studies. They were split into two groups before bedtime. One group spent five minutes jotting down everything they had to get done in the next few days. The other wrote for five minutes about what they had done already. The to-do list group fell asleep much faster, and the shorter and more specific their list was, the quicker they drifted off.


Why does this feel almost backwards
It might sound counterintuitive. Wouldn't writing down everything you still have to get done make you more anxious instead of less anxious? Indeed, that was one of two competing theories the Baylor team set out to test. According to the Baylor University press release on the study, Scullin explained that one possibility was that thinking about the future increases worry and delays sleep. The other was that writing things down would "offload" those thoughts so the brain doesn't need to keep cycling through them. The idea of offloading won. Putting the tasks on paper may help the brain treat them as temporarily set aside for the night.

This isn't just a millennial problem, though it might feel like one
If you are a young adult reading this in bed right now, you fall into the age range most likely to suffer from this the most. According to this 2024 data brief from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, the share of U.S. adults who reported trouble falling asleep most days or every day decreased with age, from 18.3 percent among adults 18 to 34 down to 12.8 percent among adults 65 and older. With side gigs and group chats between jobs, it’s no wonder this age group would be up in bed mentally rearranging tomorrow’s calendar.

So, should you start journaling every night?
This is where it’s worth being careful, because it’s easy to take a single interesting study and turn it into a sweeping life hack. The Baylor sample was 57 college-aged students tested in one lab setting, not a large, nationally representative group, and the researchers were upfront about that. Scullin said a larger follow-up study examining personality, anxiety, and depression would be useful. It’s unclear whether the effect would be the same for people with a diagnosed sleep disorder such as insomnia, as the study only involved healthy young adults, according to the Baylor press release. So this is an exciting but tentative finding, not a guaranteed remedy for sleepless nights.

That caution is important, but it doesn't mean the idea isn't worth trying. For years, sleep experts have recommended this or something similar, long before brain-wave data was measured in this study. A simple way to manage stress at bedtime is to write down what’s on your mind and put it away until tomorrow, rather than trying to keep it all in your head as you try to fall asleep, Mayo Clinic's sleep guidance says.

Mayo Clinic’s sleep guidance goes beyond simply getting organized. It recommends resolving worries before bed by writing them down, then setting them aside for tomorrow. The same advice also pairs that step with broader sleep hygiene, including a routine and a calm, dark bedroom.

The easiest habit you'll try this month
If you want to try this tonight, the formula is refreshingly low stakes: keep a notepad or notes app by your bed, and spend about five minutes writing down what you need to do tomorrow or in the next few days. Be as specific as possible, as the study found more detailed lists were associated with falling asleep faster. Instead of going through your mental checklist, do this and put the phone away when you’re done writing.

It’s not a miracle. It’s not therapy. It’s not a replacement for talking to a doctor if you suffer from chronic insomnia. But if your brain uses bedtime as an unofficial planning session, this is one of the rare, free sleep tips that's backed by real lab data, takes five minutes, and might just get you to dreamland a little faster.