Sleep advice is everywhere. Most of it is repeated advice, not tested advice. These seven are different, each one is backed by an actual study, not just tradition.
1. Keep a consistent sleep schedule
People who kept to a more regular sleep and wake schedule had a 20-48% lower risk of dying from any cause, tracked over several years, compared to those with irregular schedules. It's not about the total hours, it's the consistency itself.
→Windred et al. 2024
60,977 participants
2. Cut off caffeine 6 hours before bed
In a controlled trial, a moderate dose of caffeine taken six hours before bedtime still cut total sleep time by over an hour, even though most people didn't notice the disruption happening at that distance from bedtime.
→Drake et al. 2013
12 participants.
3. Skip alcohol before bed
Even a low dose, roughly two standard drinks, delays and shortens REM sleep, the stage tied to memory consolidation and emotional processing. Larger doses make the disruption worse.
→Gardiner et al. 2024
27 studies
4. Move regularly
In people with diagnosed insomnia, regular exercise measurably improved sleep quality and reduced how severe the insomnia was. Worth being precise here: this evidence is specifically from people with insomnia, not general sleepers, though the underlying mechanism plausibly extends more broadly.
→Banno et al. 2018
557 participants
5. Dim the lights before bed
Ordinary evening lighting, including the kind that comes off a phone or laptop screen, measurably suppressed melatonin and increased alertness within 30 minutes in a controlled setting.
→Wahnschaffe et al. 2013
9 participants
6. Take a warm shower 1-2 hours before bed
It sounds backwards, but a warm shower or bath triggers heat loss afterward that helps your body's natural pre-sleep temperature drop happen faster. Across the evidence, it shortened the time it took people to fall asleep.
→Haghayegh et al. 2019, Sleep Medicine Reviews
17 studies
7. Keep the bedroom cool
Using real-world data from wearable sleep trackers across 68 countries, warmer nighttime temperatures consistently delayed when people fell asleep, and made insufficient sleep more likely.
→ Minor et al. 2022
47,628 participants
None of these are exotic
They're small, testable changes to the hour or two around bedtime. The reason they're on this list isn't that they sound right, it's that someone actually tested them.
Where 01 Sleep fits
These seven fixes work on the conditions around sleep, timing, temperature, light, what you consume. 01 Sleep is designed to work on the falling-and-staying-asleep part itself. They're not substitutes for each other.