3 lesser-known YouTube tricks that helped me get better sleep

To tackle the obvious controversy up front, I understand that normally, that it’s best to minimize screen time before bed. The extra light alone can be disruptive to sleep, never mind the content you’re watching. In fact for most of my life, I never went to asleep with anything more than music or a podcast in the background. The closest I came to video — when I was much, much younger — was a local TV station that used to air Barney Miller reruns. If I cranked my radio dial all the way to the left, I could put the show on and simply imagine what was onscreen.

These days I almost always fall asleep to YouTube, whether it’s on my nightstand Nest Hub, or on my iPhone because I’m on the couch or in a hotel. It’s not that I can’t sleep to music or podcasts anymore. Rather, it’s because YouTube seems to work better, as long as I’m mindful about what I put on and what conditions I need to stay asleep. I’ll touch on both those conditions and some of my favorite channel subscriptions as I go along.

Winding down from stress

A necessary evil

I’ve been dealing with chronic anxiety for most of my life. Usually, I can keep it under control — but one of the times it tends to peak is overnight. Without a distraction, there’s nothing left to do but sleep or think, and thinking often wanders towards problems. Even music sometimes fails to help, since anything docile enough to fall asleep to can leave a lot of room for thought, while reminding me that it’s not working. When that happens, it’s torture.

A solid initial YouTube video will distract me long enough for my fatigue to take hold. The big trick is finding something enjoyable enough to keep me interested, but not so excited that I wind myself up again. Sometimes this will be an episode of RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst, which skewers old movies and instructional tapes. For a long time, however, I’ve been locked into videos about electric unicycles, watching channels like Ronin and PEV Point of View. There’s something oddly relaxing about watching someone glide through the streets, no matter if it’s a place as busy as Chicago or New York. Eventually I became so immersed in the idea of EUCs that I started riding myself, albeit only in outdoor rinks and on bike paths.

Another important clause here is that everyone needs to discover their sweet spot for brightness and sound. When a screen is too bright, it’s liable to not just keep you awake too long, but wake you prematurely. Dial brightness back to the lowest level where you can still make out details. As for sound, you’ll want to set that low enough that spikes won’t startle you, but high enough that you can understand speech. I find that if I can’t understand what people are saying, my annoyance can keep me as restless as anything.

Boredom traps to put me to sleep

It’s all about comfort food

I never put on a single video, since that would give YouTube’s Autoplay algorithm a chance to wreak havoc. Instead I prefer a private sleep playlist that I tweak every day. This list is built to last most or all of the night, but the majority of its videos are very different from what I start with. They’re what I like to describe as boredom traps.

Essentially, boredom traps are mildly interesting, but ultimately so dull, relaxing, or familiar that I’m (almost) guaranteed to fall asleep within minutes, as long as I’m sufficiently wound down first. You might be used to this idea from your TV habits. You can find some older comfort shows with a little searching — two of my personal picks along those lines are The Joy of Painting and Mystery Science Theater 3000. As I write this, the MST3K channel is putting up huge marathon blocks, some of them intentionally geared towards bedtime viewing.

Believe it or not, my favorite traps are videos about the Watergate scandal. Initially I just wanted a one-off video that would be boring, yet a faint beacon of hope given a certain US political leader. After a while, though, it started to become a habit, and I guarantee that few things are going to put you sleep faster than a Senate commission hearing from the ’70s. Don’t knock it until you try it.

Easing back into the land of the living

Making mornings better

The way you wake up in the morning can sometimes be equally important as any other phase of sleep. It’s why there’s a trend towards “smart” alarms on smartwatches and other fitness trackers, taking advantage of phase tracking to only go off when you’re in a light stage. Waking suddenly from deep or REM sleep tends to be unpleasant — it’s startling at best, and it can destroy your mood completely if you were in the middle of a nightmare. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.

My sleep playlist almost always finishes in some sort of ambient noise video, whether it’s rain, ocean sounds, or quieter urban traffic. Even if my alarm does go off in the middle of a nightmare, I’m immediately put into a calmer state of mind. This can also serve a purpose if you’re prone to waking up less than an hour before your alarm goes off — personally, I’m often groggy enough that falling rain will put me down again for a few minutes, anxiety notwithstanding.

My favorite channel for this is Nomadic Ambience. That’s because its creator shoots real footage from real places around the world, rather than just looping a stock sample over a fake background. For however long you’re awake, you’ll get to see sights you might never see in person, such as Kyoto at night or a rainy Swiss mountain village. I’m not sure how this man can afford to travel so far, so often.

Speaking of Japan, a runner-up in this category is Abao Ambience. These videos are mostly focused around car and train rides around Japan, but if you have fond memories of drifting off on rides as a kid, you’ll enjoy them.