How can I make it easier to get enough sleep at a normal time each night?

• How can I develop and maintain a normal, healthy sleep routine? I've had poor sleep habits for years now. Whether because of staying up too late to play online games, procrastinating on big school assignments, or just getting caught up with whenever I was doing on the Internet, I got into the bad habit of staying up too late. The worst part about it was that because my biological clock was so messed up, on the days I would decide to try to go to sleep at a normal time, I simply wouldn't be able to get to sleep. And even though I've read time and time again that you should get out of bed and do something like a light reading if you can't get to sleep within 15 minutes, I just couldn't help but stay in the bed hoping I'd eventually fall asleep; it's hard to pry yourself away from a warm bed, especially during cold weather. There have been times where for a short period, I have gotten into a normal sleep routine, but it never lasted for more than a couple weeks. Such as most recently, after returning from a trip to Europe, the time difference there helped put me into a normal sleep routine here in the United States; it was like a whole new experience for me to be able to regularly wake up around 7:00 AM without an alarm clock and feeling well rested. I did my best to maintain that sleep routine, but for whatever reason, it gradually became harder to get right to sleep after getting into bed, and so I'd get into the vicious cycle of staying up later, having to wake up later to still feel well rested, and being unable to get to sleep until later the following night. But now that the new college semester is starting, I'm determined to do well, and to do that I know I'll have to be getting enough sleep a lot more often. So what can I do to make sure that I am able to get enough sleep on a regular basis? I've tried melatonin, but have had mixed results with it; occasionally it would put me right to sleep and I'd wake up feeling well rested, but I've also had problems with it not putting me to sleep, or where I'd wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep. I've also felt a minor effect from Extra Sleepytime tea, but have never really tried any other sleepiness teas. I'd heard that light exposure plays a role, so I've sometimes tried to get out into the sunlight more often early in the day, and to avoid looking into bright lights late at night, but I'm not sure that these things have had much of an effect. I've heard that getting plenty of exercise early in the day helps, but there have been days where I spent hours walking, but still have had trouble getting to sleep that night. My mattress and pillow are really old and I intend to get a quality pillow soon, but my budget just doesn't allow for a new mattress anytime soon. I always try to avoid caffeine in the evening, but occasionally I'll drink decaffeinated tea or eat something like chocolate pudding shortly before bed; is this a bad idea? Is there any kind of ideal meal that I could eat prior to bed for getting to sleep faster? I usually snack on peanuts if I get hungry in bed. I know it's going to take self-discipline on my part to maintain a normal sleep routine, but how can I effectively establish one in the first place? I'm convinced that I'm going to have to develop the habit of waking up and going to sleep at roughly the same time every night, so how I can I make it easier to do that?

• Answer:

  If just getting to bed is part of the challenge, I had pretty good luck setting alarms: - One went off 15 minutes before I was supposed to stop what I was doing and go to bed. The 15-minute warning helped me wind an activity down or get to a place where I could stop what I was working on. - Another went off at bed time and I granted it absolute authority. It going off meant "stop and go to bed, no excuses." Then I'd give myself 30 minutes to read in bed. - A third went off when it was time to turn off the lights, though I'd allow myself to finish the chapter. Pretty regimented, but after several weeks of that I started noticing that I was consistently feeling sleepy just before the "time to put the book down" alarm went off . Also key: Sticking to whatever waking routine you come up with through the weekends. I used to treat weekends like they were somehow different, but found myself staying up way too late on Friday or Saturday night, then badly oversleeping on Saturday morning, to the point my 11 p.m. bed time just didn't work. Now, barring a very special occasion, I'm up at 6 every day of the week. If I have a hard time going to sleep for whatever reason, I make it a point to limit my naps during the day to 25 minutes or shorter. Much more than that and I'll fall out of my bedtime routine pretty easily.