Had to pick between audiobook and white noise for falling asleep... picked wrong

I usually listen to a thriller audiobook to drift off, but last night my mind was racing from a work argument. So I figured I'd swap to white noise, like rain sounds, to calm down. Big mistake. After 20 minutes of lying there staring at the ceiling, the silence just made my brain louder. I switched back to the audiobook around 11 PM, but then I got hooked on the plot and stayed up until 1 AM finishing a chapter. Now I'm dragging today at my desk in Phoenix. Has anyone else had a bedtime audio choice backfire like that? What do you pick when you're too wired to sleep?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake98626d ago

My buddy Dave tried that same swap last week. He put on a fan noise playlist and his brain just started replaying every dumb thing he said in a meeting five years ago. He gave up, put on a sci-fi audiobook, and woke up with the narrator still talking about quantum drives four hours later.

noaht1526d ago

Yeah white noise can totally backfire like that. My thing is I'll try to switch to some boring history podcast when I'm too wired, but last week I put on one about medieval grain storage and instead of getting sleepy my brain started wondering if my pantry organization is efficient enough. Ended up googling "how to store rice long term" at midnight. The real kicker is I usually listen to fantasy audiobooks and they work fine, but if I try something too dry my brain just finds other stuff to obsess over. Maybe it's just me but there's a sweet spot between too interesting and too boring that's really hard to hit when you're already stressed.

wells.olivia26d ago

Oh man, I was the exact opposite for years. I swore by true crime podcasts to knock me out and thought white noise was pointless. But last week I was wired from a late coffee and tried ocean waves on my sleep app. Actually worked, I was out in like 10 minutes. Now I'm kinda annoyed because I have to switch it up depending on how fried my brain is.