There are very few people who have absolutely no trouble falling asleep at night. For most, falling asleep feels impossible with all the crazy, stressful situations that decide to take over your thoughts the minute your head hits the pillow. Then you start stressing over the idea that your stress is keeping you awake, which keeps you up even later. You need your sleep. Especially during finals. Seven to eight hours of solid, restful sleep makes you feel better, think better, look better, live better. Here is how to get it. Starting tonight.

1. Set a bedtime – and stick to it. Staying up super late every night to catch up on all of the latest episodes of all of your shows does not sound like it will do any real harm, but even if you only binge watch Netflix once in a while, you are still throwing off your sleep schedule. Your internal clock is designed to recognize feelings of sleepiness over a 24-hour period. When you are sleep deprived, your performance at school goes down, and your social skills and relationships also suffer. That is why it is important to follow a sleep schedule. By going to sleep (and waking up!) at the same time every day, you will condition your body to begin getting tired at the same time every day, making it easier to fall asleep when your head hits the pillow.
2. Take a Bath. A drop in body temperature makes you feel cozy and sleepy. When you take a hot bath, your body’s temperature rises and the rapid cool down when you get out of the bath helps you feel sleepy.
3. Turn off your phone! Every time you look at your phone at night, when the light hits your retina, it suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep. So when you stay up until midnight snapchatting, the blue light in your phone confuses your brain into thinking it is daytime. Instead of scrolling through Instagram before bed, read a book or take a bath. If you must check your phone, turn on the night-shift setting.
4. Hide your clock. If you are having trouble sleeping, you may become anxious about the fact that you can’t sleep, leading you to wake up in the middle of the night to check the clock. So do yourself a favor and put your phone (or actual alarm clock) far away from where you sleep, like under your bed or in your bedside table, so you do not feel the need to look at it at night.