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Stress and recoverySleep hygienecooling weighted blanketSingapore By JJ · 20 Oct 2026 · 7 min read

Can Trying Too Hard to Sleep Keep You Awake?

Yes, it can. Sleep is a mostly automatic process, and lab studies show that straining to make it happen, watching the clock or reading a bad sleep score can all add worry and delay sleep, or make the next day feel worse than the night really was. The approaches with the best evidence work by taking the pressure off: a steady schedule, less time lying awake in bed, and a gentler attitude to a rough night.

Why sleepmaxxing is getting pushback

"Sleepmaxxing" is the social media habit of stacking every possible sleep hack: mouth tape, supplements, blackout blinds, room sprays, rings and scores. In an October 2026 Macquarie University feature, clinical psychologist and sleep researcher Dr Amelia Scott questioned where it leads. "Sleep tends to shy away from effort," she said. "Sleep is something that we have to let happen rather than make happen."

The tracking side of the trend is big. In a 2025 American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) survey of 2,007 US adults, 48% had used a sleep tracking device, up from 35% in 2023, and 55% had changed their behaviour based on what a sleep tracker told them. The same survey found that 76% of adults said they had lost sleep because of worries about sleep problems, a worry the AASM calls "sleep anxiety."

What the research says about sleep effort

Sleep researchers call this "sleep effort": deliberate attempts to make yourself fall asleep. Colin Espie and colleagues at the University of Glasgow argued in 2006 that normal sleep runs on autopilot, so focused attention and direct attempts to control it can get in its way. Their team built the Glasgow Sleep Effort Scale to measure exactly this.

Several experiments back the idea up:

| Study | What people were asked to do | What happened | |---|---|---| | Ansfield, Wegner and Bowser, 1996 (USA) | Fall asleep as fast as possible, or whenever, while listening to calm or rousing music | With rousing marches playing, trying to sleep fast made sleep onset slower. With calm music, it didn't backfire | | Tang, Schmidt and Harvey, 2007 | Watch a clock, or not, while trying to fall asleep | Clock watchers reported more pre-sleep worry and took longer to fall asleep, in good and poor sleepers alike | | Gavriloff and colleagues, 2018 (UK) | 63 adults with insomnia got fake "good" or "bad" sleep feedback on a watch | The "bad" group felt less alert and more tired by evening, though their actual sleep hadn't been manipulated |

The first study is a useful nuance. Wanting to sleep isn't the problem. Trying hard while your mind is busy is where effort tends to backfire, and a busy mind is exactly what many of us bring to bed.

The third study connects to the tracker boom. Scott pointed to it directly: "The only thing that was manipulated was the feedback, not their actual sleep." A poor score can become, in her words, "the forecast or the prognosis of the day ahead." Back in 2017, US sleep researchers coined the term "orthosomnia" for patients whose tracker data had turned into a perfectionistic quest for ideal sleep.

None of this means trackers are bad. A year of ring data from Singapore helped show how much normal sleep varies from night to night, as we covered in our look at whether 6 hours is too little. The issue is what the numbers do to your head at 1am.

The odd fix: stop trying to fall asleep

Paradoxical intention is a talking therapy technique from the 1970s that sounds backwards. You lie in bed with the lights off and gently try to stay awake, without screens or getting up, which removes the pressure to perform.

In a 2003 trial of 34 people who struggled to fall asleep, two weeks of paradoxical intention lowered sleep effort and sleep performance anxiety compared with controls. Objectively measured time to fall asleep didn't differ, though people's own estimates trended shorter. A 2021 review of 10 trials found large improvements in insomnia symptoms against no treatment and moderate ones against other treatments, while saying better-designed studies are still needed.

What to do when you can't fall asleep

The AASM's clinical guideline for chronic insomnia strongly recommends cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). It also conditionally supports single techniques such as stimulus control, which retrains your brain to link bed with sleep instead of lying awake, and it suggests against relying on sleep hygiene tips alone. Singapore's HealthHub puts that into everyday steps.

  1. Keep a steady wake time. Scott singles out regularity, and HealthHub suggests getting up at the same time every day, weekends included.
  2. Get up after about 20 minutes. HealthHub's advice is to leave the bed if you're not asleep and sit somewhere quiet and dim, away from work, TV and the internet. Go back when you feel sleepy.
  3. Hide the clock. HealthHub warns that checking the time "may make you more anxious." The AASM suggests looking at tracker data only in the morning, never at night.
  4. Judge the day by how you feel. One rough night is not a verdict on tomorrow. Notice whether you're actually functioning before trusting a score.
  5. Keep comfort simple. A cool, dark room helps, especially on humid nights. Some people like the steady pressure of a weighted blanket, or a cooling weighted blanket like the phase change design on our specifications page if they run hot. Treat it as comfort, not one more lever to pull.
  6. Get help if it lasts. If poor sleep goes on for weeks or affects your days, see a doctor or a sleep specialist and ask about CBT-I. Stress is often part of the picture, as we found in our piece on what's stealing sleep in 2026.

As Scott puts it, the hardest part is letting go: "The body knows what it's doing."

Sources

  1. Dell T. Are we trying too hard to sleep? How 'sleepmaxxing' could be keeping us awake. Macquarie University, via Medical Xpress. 9 October 2026. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-hard-sleepmaxxing.html
  2. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Sleep tracking and 'sleepmaxxing' change bedtime behaviors, and keep some Americans awake at night (2025 Sleep Prioritization Survey, n=2,007). https://aasm.org/sleep-tracking-and-sleepmaxxing-change-bedtime-behaviors-and-keep-some-americans-awake-at-night/
  3. Espie CA, Broomfield NM, MacMahon KM, Macphee LM, Taylor LM. The attention-intention-effort pathway in the development of psychophysiologic insomnia: a theoretical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2006;10(4):215-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2006.03.002
  4. Broomfield NM, Espie CA. Towards a valid, reliable measure of sleep effort. Journal of Sleep Research. 2005;14(4):401-407. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2005.00481.x
  5. Ansfield ME, Wegner DM, Bowser R. Ironic effects of sleep urgency. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 1996;34(7):523-531. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(96)00031-9
  6. Tang NK, Schmidt DA, Harvey AG. Sleeping with the enemy: clock monitoring in the maintenance of insomnia. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. 2007;38(1):40-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2005.07.004
  7. Gavriloff D, Sheaves B, Juss A, Espie CA, Miller CB, Kyle SD. Sham sleep feedback delivered via actigraphy biases daytime symptom reports in people with insomnia. Journal of Sleep Research. 2018;27(6):e12726. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12726
  8. Baron KG, Abbott S, Jao N, Manalo N, Mullen R. Orthosomnia: are some patients taking the quantified self too far? Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2017;13(2):351-354. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6472
  9. Salim O, Jansson-Fröjmark M, Sandlund C, Norell A. Paradoxical intention as a treatment for insomnia disorder: study protocol for a mixed-methods pilot trial. BMJ Open. 2024;14(10):e086676. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2024-086676
  10. Broomfield NM, Espie CA. Initial insomnia and paradoxical intention: an experimental investigation of putative mechanisms using subjective and actigraphic measurement of sleep. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. 2003;31(3):313-324. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465803003060
  11. Jansson-Fröjmark M, Alfonsson S, Bohman B, Rozental A, Norell-Clarke A. Paradoxical intention for insomnia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sleep Research. 2022;31(2):e13464. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13464
  12. Edinger JD, Arnedt JT, Bertisch SM, et al. Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2021;17(2):255-262. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986
  13. HealthHub (Ministry of Health, Singapore). 11 Healthy Habits to Sleep Better. https://www.healthhub.sg/well-being-and-lifestyle/mental-wellness/overcoming_insomnia

This article is informational and not medical advice. Claims about sleep and wellbeing are general; for personal health concerns consult a qualified professional.