"Cognitive shuffling" — imagining a series of unrelated words (e.g. the POCKET method) — can help you fall asleep by cutting off rumination.

noli's read

The source is named and checkable: Dr. Luc Beaudoin, Simon Fraser University, who formalized the technique as "serial diverse imagining" in theoretical work starting in 2014. A controlled pilot study (Digdon & Beaudoin, n=154 students) found the technique significantly improved pre-sleep cognitive arousal, sleep effort, and perceived sleep quality (p<.001), performing comparably to a validated therapy (structured problem-solving). Worth flagging honestly: the available studies are still small and mostly come from the technique's own inventor's lab — promising, but not yet independently replicated at scale. The mechanism (occupying attention to block rumination) is plausible and the risk is nil, which makes it a reasonable thing to try.

the sources

No named source held this one up — that absence is part of the verdict.