Does counting sheep help you sleep? A study found a sharper mental trick

Counting sheep is the folk remedy everyone knows, and the closest thing to a direct test of it suggests it does not work especially well [s1]. In a study of people with insomnia, those trained to distract themselves with a vivid, engaging mental image fell asleep faster, while those given only a general instruction to distract themselves — the counting-sheep style of vague, monotonous distraction — showed no such benefit [s1]. The useful lesson is not that distraction is pointless, but that the specific, absorbing kind beats the bland kind.

The study behind the claim

The evidence comes from a 2002 experiment in Behaviour Research and Therapy by Allison Harvey and Suzanna Payne, who worked from the common complaint that insomnia patients cannot sleep because of unwanted thoughts and worries [s1]. They gave 41 people with insomnia one of three sets of instructions for the pre-sleep period: distract using a specific, interesting imagery task; distract in a general, unspecified way; or no instruction at all [s1]. The researchers predicted that imagery distraction would shorten the time to fall asleep, and that general distraction would actually lengthen it [s1].

The first prediction held: the imagery group fell asleep sooner and reported less frequent, less distressing pre-sleep thinking than those given no instruction [s1]. The second did not — general distraction was not reliably worse than doing nothing [s1]. The authors attributed imagery's success to its occupying enough "cognitive space" to keep worries from creeping back in [s1]. Counting sheep, on that reading, fails not because distraction is useless but because it is too dull and undemanding to hold the mind, leaving room for the very thoughts keeping you awake.

Why "engaging" is the operative word

This is a single, small study — 41 participants, measured on a night in a lab rather than over weeks at home — so it cannot bear too much weight [s1]. It is best read as one data point in a wider picture: the problem in insomnia is often cognitive and emotional arousal at bedtime, and a technique helps to the degree that it genuinely quiets that arousal. A boring count does little; a rich, immersive scene does more.

The design rested on a well-established idea in psychology, "ironic control theory," which holds that deliberately trying to empty the mind can backfire and make the unwanted thoughts more insistent [s1]. That is the trap counting sheep can fall into: a monotonous count is close to trying not to think, which leaves the mind free to snap back to whatever is worrying it. A demanding image, by contrast, gives attention a real job to do. The researchers measured not just how quickly people fell asleep but how often and how distressingly pre-sleep thoughts intruded, and the imagery group came out ahead on both [s1]. The site's survey of viral fixes reaches a similar verdict on the sleepmaxxing hacks, rated, and the broader question of what to do when you wake in the night turns on the same principle.

What the evidence actually backs

For persistent insomnia, the treatments with real backing are not bedtime tricks but structured behavioural therapy. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's 2021 guideline reserves its "strong" recommendation — the kind it says clinicians should follow under most circumstances — for multicomponent cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and gives only "conditional" recommendations to individual techniques such as stimulus control and relaxation therapy [s2]. In other words, single tricks like distraction sit at the weaker end of the evidence, while the packaged programme sits at the strong end. How that programme stacks up against sleeping pills is covered in CBT-I versus hypnotics. None of this is medical advice.

Sources

• The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction — Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2002-03-01
• Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline — Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2021-02-01