I'll bite and say I think it can be pretty personal. I struggled with insomnia-like symptoms for a while (eg, I simply was not tired and could not fall asleep)

I'll bite and say I think it can be pretty personal. I struggled with insomnia-like symptoms for a while (eg, I simply was not tired and could not fall asleep) until I began to experiment with a couple of things. For me the most important where - waking up at a consistent hour, every day, even the weekends - no caffeine after noon, ideally not after 11, but I like coffee (individual tolerance will vary, I'm apparently on the sensitive side) - make sure you're comfortable at night. It's baffling that I didn't realize this sooner, but the trick to falling asleep for me is to just get comfortable enough that I don't really want to move. When you hit that point where you're so comfortable and don't feel the need to move, then drifting off is easy. - have a planning method to make sure you are organized and offload any thoughts about what needs to happen. I read Getting Things Done and implemented some of the stuff there and that helped a lot in freeing up my mind from worrying - remind yourself, routinely, that whatever you are doing, you'll be able to do it better in the morning > I can work around this by moderating the length of my sleep, ie, allowing myself to go for at least 7.5 hours no matter when I fall, but sometimes IRL obligations get in the way. For most folks working more strict office hours (or god, retail) this is not a workable suggestion. Even then, eventually I'll drift too far, one of the sleep cycles gets shorted, then there's this weird recovery period with some short naps, and surprise now we're waking up at dawn again. That is pretty much where I was. I'd go to sleep at varying hours from 10PM to 5AM, always somehow later each night. Sometimes it would take me very long to fall asleep (ie 2 hrs +) unless I felt very tired. Looking back, it is like I needed to be truly exhausted -- not just sleepy, but exhausted -- to fall asleep and that pushed back my sleep schedule every night a little bit. It wasn't until I got brutal headaches and brain fog everyday that I made it my top priority and began to take an inventory of everything that got in my way. I still go to bed late (between midnight and 1) though, in part because it lets me do regular social things and still, usually, go to bed on time.