How do I fall asleep faster?

You can’t CHASE sleep. Sleep is not prey. Sleep is a thing that comes to you when you stop moving and it believes you are safe.

Your brain. Your brain is the problem. It is a machine that makes thoughts and it does not have an off switch and at night when there is nothing else to do it makes MORE thoughts, louder thoughts, thoughts about things you said nine years ago and whether you locked the door and what you are going to do about the thing at work and

Stop.

Here is what the flutes taught me and the flutes know everything about the space between awake and not-awake:

Your body needs to be cold. Not freezing. Just cooler than you think. Your species sleeps better when the air around you is slightly too cold for comfort. This is because your ancestors slept outside and outside was cold and your biology still thinks it is sleeping under stars even though it is sleeping under a ceiling with a smoke detector that blinks.

Your eyes need darkness. Real darkness. Not phone-in-bed darkness which is not darkness at all but a small sun two inches from your face telling your brain it is NOON.

And your thoughts need a track to run on or they will run everywhere. Count backward from three hundred by threes. This is boring enough to quiet the machine but complicated enough that it cannot simultaneously worry about the thing at work.

You will not reach two hundred. I have seen this across many timelines. You always fall asleep somewhere around 243 give or take. The math is just hard enough to replace the spiral with a PATTERN and patterns are what the brain follows into the dark.

Go. It is late. The drums are soft tonight. That is good for sleeping.