It’s long been said that, in their lifespan, the average person will spend a total of 26 years — which is longer than I’ve been alive — sleeping. There’s a good reason for that, since sleep is a critical component of health. It’s not hard to recognize all the reasons sleep is important, from staying awake and alert during your day-to-day tasks to improving heart health and maintaining your immune system.
But getting the recommended eight hours every night is harder to do than it is to say. I’ve tried plenty of tricks to help myself fall into better sleep, from blackout darkness to guided sleep meditations. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. The goal remains: if only I had a consistent practice that would help me fall asleep and stay asleep to wake up refreshed every day.
Here enters a method by many names: 3-2-1 sleep method or rule, sometimes referred to as the 10-3-2-1-0 sleep rule, is a routine designed to help give your body the consistency to set itself up for a restful sleep during the night and more energy during the day. I recently tried the method for myself, and though it was pretty difficult to find the space and time to complete it, I slept soundly through a night I wouldn’t have been surprised to wake up in the middle of and woke up better rested in the morning. I also spoke to Brian Clark, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist and a founder of United Medical Education, about the keys to the 3-2-1 sleep method and why it works.
What is the 3-2-1 Sleep Method?
By counting down 3-2-1, you can give yourself simple steps to prepare yourself for sleep. Each step tells you to stop doing something. “The 3-2-1 sleeping technique assists the body to relax into deep sleep,” Clark explains. The rules are these: “no food or alcohol three hours before bed, no work two hours before, and no screens one hour before.” Others have noted add-ons to this method, including no caffeine ten hours before bed (no afternoon coffee!) and no water two hours before, when work stops.
Even though it may not be so easy to accomplish, Clark explains why this routine is important for cultivating good sleep. “It helps the body to work in its own rhythm,” Clark says. “Digestion is [slowed] during the preparation of rest. There is less mental stimulation. The harmful blue light that disturbs melatonin is filtered [out over] time. Not suddenly, but your system turns down gradually.”
This practice works by eliminating actors that could hinder the body’s preparation for sleep. “Eating late at night keeps the body in metabolism when it is supposed to be resetting,” Clark explains. “Last-minute work will keep your head in high alertness. Exposure to the screen disrupts the production of melatonin. Every stage of the process eliminates an obstacle toward a good night’s sleep. It is not about hacks. It is a matter of going back to the way the body is designed to relax.”
Though our work culture (and screen culture) makes this practice hard to implement, at its core, it’s about doing what your body needs to operate at its natural efficiency. “An efficient pre-bed ritual,” Clark says, “is a necessary requirement, particularly in the medical sector, where the performance is dependent on response and recuperation.”
What are the benefits of the 3-2-1 sleep method?
My main hesitation about this method was spending two hours of my evening before bed not working. I still doubt this method would be regularly applicable during the school year, but I’m sure some redistribution of my time would make it at least semi-plausible. Clark explains that the timing of this method is a critical component. “This is a method that is misunderstood by people because they either skip a step or do all three at once just before bed,” Clark says. “That will not be any good.”
Setting a regular schedule for sleep is a key part of getting the most from that third of your life where you’re unconscious. As Clark explains, “The spacing and consistency are what count. Consider every step a gear in a machine. Skip one, and the system goes to a grinding halt.”
At the very least, not consuming caffeine in the afternoon and cutting down on work and screentime, especially as you approach bedtime, is sure to make a difference in your sleep hygiene. Clark says, “Even smaller decisions at night have an effect on how alert you will be in the morning. Getting rested is not an option in life and medicine. It is the bottom line.”
So, does the 3-2-1 sleep method work?
Short answer: yes. But here’s the long answer: The first roadblock I had in trying this method for myself was scheduling. I like to be in bed by 11:30 or midnight, which meant I had to have my last meal by 8:30 p.m. and stop working by 9:30 p.m. A series of late nights doing volunteer work and traveling to visit family meant that my usual daytime routine was interrupted by later meals or earlier bedtimes (or wake-up times) than usual. I finally got to a day where I could eat a normal dinner.
Counting down from the 3 to the 2, I had to make sure I got through working by 9:30 p.m. This might have led to a bit of cramming my to-do list in the evening, but I also found it good motivation to knock out some tasks I would have otherwise put off. Not working was a bit difficult after 9:30 passed because… well, what really counts as work? As a writer, I wondered if working on some of my writing projects would count as the kind of work stimulation that would be bad for sleep. Similarly, did the reading I’d been assigned count? Since this method is all about winding down and avoiding making yourself overly alert late, I decided I wouldn’t do any reading or writing that fell into the assignment range.
Moving from the 2 to the 1: cutting out screentime. Luckily, I’d just purchased a nearly thousand-page book to work my way through, so at 10:30 p.m., I turned off my overhead, turned on my bedside lamp, and cracked open my book to read for an hour.
Falling asleep seemed like it took about the same amount of time it would have normally taken me, but I did notice one tremendous change as a result of this method: I didn’t wake up once in the middle of the night, despite that being a semi-regular occurrence for me during weeks like the one when I tried this sleep method. I also think I felt slightly more awake during the day.
All in all, it was tough — but absolutely worth it. Enough to move around my schedule, though? I’m not sure — but if I have the time, I know I’ll be going back to it.