In this video, Scott Walter MD explains a simple trick that will allow you to fall asleep quickly even if your mind is running on overdrive. The technique is called cognitive shuffling, and it essentially allows your mind to get rid of thoughts that prevent you to fall asleep by “shuffling” your ideas, just like you would shuffle a deck of cards.

There’s a couple ways to do it one is just thinking of random words or objects that have nothing to do with each other. For example, cow, leaf sandwich, butter, liver – things like that just random words that make no sense. But if you don’t like random, there’s another method. First you pick a letter of the alphabet, Number two you start counting your heartbeat, then every eight beats you think of a word that begins with that letter.

I’ve been doing it for the past 2 days, and so far, it seems to be working!