I have tried various technological or mental gizmos over the years to help me fall and stay asleep: white noise machines, small fans, mantras, working my way through the alphabet naming flowers or birds or superheroes, or tensing and relaxing my body from the feet up.
A few months back, I tried something different and I now tend to fall asleep and get back to sleep more quickly.
It’s not a new idea by any means: I listen to music through my Bluetooth headset as I go to sleep. If I wake in the night, I simply put the music back on and away I doze.
Two keys that make this work for me: the music and the hardware.
Music
What came first was the music. I don’t know why music works for me; it could be that the music distracts the busy analytical part of my mind enough so the sleepy part can shut everything down.
In my iTunes music library, I created a playlist folder called “aZleep” (it sorts to the top of the folder list) and in it, I have playlists for the following:
- Some time back, Moby released a playlist of slow, droney tracks that he created to help himself relax and sleep, “Long Ambients1: Calm. Sleep.” Each track is from 17 to 35 minutes long. I usually find myself asleep within a few minutes. I let the music play to the end of the playlist in case I wake up in the night.
- If my mind is feeling overactive, I listen to Sharon Isbin’s complete Bach lute sonatas. This album is in its own playlist and lasts about an hour. I can’t remember ever listening to the whole thing; I think my mind has associated this CD with sleep for so long that I am usually gone by the third or fourth track.
- Max Richter’s From Sleep is a minimal, ambient album, not as electronic or droney as Moby. More rhythmic. There is piano, strings, some vocal chant – rather melancholy, truth be told. It’s an hour long and is excerpted from the much much much longer work Sleep, which is intended to reflect a complete 8-hour sleep cycle. As one Amazon customer puts it, “Playing it a little louder, it also works fairly well as somewhat somber background music for dinner parties.” Sold!
- Thunderstorm sounds also work really well for me, for whatever reason. The sounds of a storm outside, the comfort of shelter inside – this works for me.
And that’s it. When I go to bed, I pick whichever category of sound stands out and crawl under the covers. If I get up in the night, I’ll simply start playing it again.
Hardware
The other key to making this work for me is my LG HBS-730 Bluetooth headset. I’ve had these for so long the button locations are in my muscle memory.
I use a bit of black tape to cover up the blinking blue light indicating that bluetooth is activated. Whenever I wake in the night and want to hear the music again, I simply press the Play button and the active playlist starts right up.
I like this “collar” style of headset for sleeping. It does not obstruct my head movement, does not fall off, and does not get in my way. I do not put an earbud into both ears; I sleep on my side and don’t like the feel of an earbud pressing into my ear. Instead, whenever I turn over to my other side, I remove one, dock it magnetically to the collar, and insert the other. I’ve been doing this for so long, the action does not wake me up.
My sleeping problems seem to be 90 percent licked. The waking-up-and-not-raring-to-go-in-the-morning problem is still there, but these things take time.
Updated on 2026-01-29:
- The LG HBS-730 headset is long discontinued, but there are other similar collar headsets available. The location of the controls vary a bit, but after a few days, I know them by feel. Since they’re relatively cheap, I try to buy two sets: one that stays by my bed, one that stays in my travel kit.
- I also expanded my nighttime listening to speech, talking, audiobooks, podcasts. If I’m sleepy but my mind is particularly busy, then having that busy part of the mind distracted by listening to people talking will sometimes help me sleep.
- But then there are nights where I will wake up and can’t get back. This tendency got a lot better in 2024 when I worked with practitioner of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi).
