Instant sleep...

As a graduate student, I'm often up well past midnight. If you do that enough, or get stressed enough, you may find yourself having trouble sleeping.

I saw a thing somewhere recently that said the average college student sleeps less than six hours a night. That's true for me but not always. Sometimes I don't have something due the next day I forgot about until 10:30 the night before. How do I tell my body it's okay to sleep when I've been awake until four a.m. for the last six days?

Simple, I exhaust it.

How does that work? Well, it's a lot like exercise, but without the work.

Start with your toes, and flex every muscle going up your legs, for about ten seconds.

This does two things:
1. It's physical effort and wears you out.
2. It draws blood away from your brain.

The combination of these two things will put you to sleep pretty quickly. I can drink coffee and do this trick, and I'll be out in about ten minutes.

Also, I've heard something about repeating the word, "the," over and over. I'm not sure why, but this has some adherents.
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