While this could be a symptom of an untreated medical condition like sleep apnea insomnia , or narcolepsy (having trouble sleeping is a plenty-good reason to make an appointment with a doctor), your habitual sleeplessness may have a simpler solution than you thought. In fact, plenty of doctors believe that the cure can be as obvious as taking time to reset and prepare for sleep before jumping into bed. “If your complaint is, ‘my car just can’t take the exit on the road fast enough,’ the first question is, ‘how much room did you give yourself to slow down? When did you start tapping the brakes?’” says Michael Grandner, PhD , director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona. “Did you do it two seconds before your exit, in which case you miss your exit, or did you give yourself enough time to slow down?” The analogy is intended to convey the fact that most of us don’t give ourselves enough time to slow down at night. We charge through our days, directly jump into bed, while our organs are still pacing at overdrive. “You’d have to be really sleep deprived to not need a ritual,” says Joshua Tal, PhD , a clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep.