Can't sleep after working late? Why, and what helps

If you can't sleep after working late, it is usually because your brain is still at work: alert, halfway through a problem, and lit by a bright screen until a few minutes before you lie down. What helps most is a gap between the two. Close the day with a ten minute shutdown, write tomorrow's list, dim the screen, and give yourself at least half an hour, ideally an hour, of something calm before bed.

None of that is complicated, but on a late night every step feels optional, which is why it so often gets skipped.

Why can't you sleep after working late?

Sleep needs two things to line up: enough tiredness, and a mind and body that have come down from the day. Late work usually gives you the first and takes away the second.

• You are still switched on. Focused work, especially with a deadline or a problem you haven't cracked, keeps you alert. That alertness is useful at 3 PM. It does not switch off the moment you close the lid, and it can take a while to fade.
• The problem keeps running. An unfinished task tends to stay in your head. Lie down with it still open and your mind goes back to it, again and again, the way your tongue keeps finding a chipped tooth.
• The screen was bright and close. Bright light in the evening may delay the rise of melatonin, the hormone that helps signal night. How much a laptop screen on its own matters is debated, but a bright screen at arm's length until midnight doesn't help.
• There was no transition. At an office, the commute separates work from home. Working late at home, you can go from a spreadsheet to the pillow in five minutes, and your mind hasn't caught up.
• The late coffee. A coffee at four to get through the evening can still be working at bedtime. When to stop drinking coffee for sleep has the details.

So the job is to finish the work on purpose, lower the light, and leave enough time for the alertness to drain away.

How long should you wait between work and bed?

There is no exact number, and it varies with the person and the work. As a rough guide, leave at least 30 minutes between closing work and trying to sleep, and an hour or more after anything stressful: a hard call, a deadline, a production problem. If you often lie awake after late sessions, make the gap longer before you try anything else.

The buffer is not dead time. It is when the shutdown, the dimming and the calm part of the evening happen, and it works best when it looks roughly the same every night.

If the evening has already run too late for that, shrink it rather than skip it. Ten minutes of shutdown and ten minutes of dim light are far better than going straight from the inbox to bed.

How to switch off after working late: a ten minute shutdown

This is the part that stops the work following you to bed. Do it at the desk, in this order.

1. Stop at a clear next step. Before you close anything, write one line saying exactly what comes next ("fix the date filter in the report, then send it"). Knowing where to start tomorrow makes it easier to stop tonight.
2. Write tomorrow's list. Three things for the morning, on paper if you can. One small sleep-lab study found that people who wrote a to-do list before bed fell asleep faster than people who wrote about what they had already done. One study proves little, but it costs five minutes to try.
3. Park the worry. If something is bothering you, write it down with the first thing you will do about it. A worry with a plan tends to be quieter than a worry without one.
4. Send only what can't wait. For the rest, Mail in recent versions of macOS has Send Later, so you can write the reply now and have it go out in the morning.
5. Quit the work apps. Press Command-Q in Mail, your work chat and anything else work-shaped, rather than just closing windows. If they aren't running, they can't tempt you.
6. Close the lid, and if you can, put the laptop somewhere you can't see it from the bed.

For a fuller version with a closing phrase that marks the end, see a shutdown ritual to end your workday.

Dim the screen and the room

If you are still on the Mac after work, for a film or to message a friend, take the light down a long way.

• Brightness. Use the brightness keys, or the Display slider in Control Center. In a dim room, a low setting is plenty.
• Night Shift. In System Settings > Displays, click Night Shift and set a schedule so the screen turns warmer in the evening. The evidence that warmer colors alone improve sleep is mixed, so treat it as a comfort and a cue, not a fix.
• Dark Mode on Auto. In System Settings > Appearance, choose Auto so the Mac switches to dark in the evening.
• The room. Swap the overhead light for a lamp, and keep the bathroom light low while you get ready for bed.

What is on the screen matters at least as much as how bright it is. A calm show at low brightness is a different evening from one more look at the inbox.

If you use Notchpals, a character can handle the brightness reminder. The Eyes character in your crew comes out of the Mac's notch once on evenings you are at the keyboard, some time from 9 PM to midnight. If Professor Hoot is your Eyes character, it sounds like this:

Professor HootEvening, class. The library dims its lamps after nine. Dim your screen too.

What if you still can't fall asleep?

Some nights the mind keeps going whatever you did. A few things help.

• Don't watch the clock. Turn it away. Working out how long you have been awake makes it harder to sleep.
• Get up if it drags on. Sleep specialists commonly advise that if you have been lying awake for what feels like a while (about 20 minutes is the usual guide, judged roughly, not timed), you get up, go somewhere dim, and do something calm and a bit dull until you feel sleepy. Then go back to bed.
• Keep the laptop closed. If a work thought arrives, write it on a notepad by the bed. Opening the Mac "just to note it" turns into an hour.
• Slow your breathing. A long, slow out-breath helps many people settle. 4-7-8 breathing for sleep walks through one pattern step by step.

An occasional bad night after a late session is normal. If you struggle to fall or stay asleep most nights for weeks, or feel worn out during the day however long you spend in bed, talk to a doctor. Long-running sleep trouble is common, and a doctor can help in ways that more tips can't.

A nudge before the night runs on

The hardest part of all this is noticing the time while you are absorbed, and that is the part Notchpals can take on. If a Schedule character is in your crew, it makes one Wrap up visit on weekday evenings, early enough to stop before the evening is gone. Then, if Sleep is one of your areas, your Sleep character comes by once in the hour before the bedtime you set, as long as you are still at the Mac. Boo, a ghost with very good manners, asks like this:

BooSorry to interrupt... it's nearly bedtime. Maybe save your work? Sorry.

Pressing Done is a good moment to start the shutdown above. If you keep going, Boo comes back once bedtime has passed, and once more if the session runs into the small hours. If you closed the lid and left, none of it happens. Notchpals can't close the laptop for you, and it never knows how you slept.