The sleep routine checklist
Updated
A sleep routine checklist is the thirty seconds a night where the routine actually happens. Everything else — choosing your habits, setting your bedtime, deciding to start — is done once. The checklist is the only part that has to survive every single evening, which is why its design matters more than it looks like it should.
The free printable
Here is ours: the sleep routine checklist (PDF). One page, prints on A4 or US Letter, no email address, no sign-up, no watermark.
It has six things on it:
- Your wake time and bedtime at the top, in your handwriting
- Five lines for habits, each with a box for the time you will do it
- Fourteen nights of tick boxes, one column per night
- A “done for tonight” row to count the nights you finished
- A short list to choose from, graded by how good the evidence is
- A “what got in the way” line — one word for each night you missed
That last one does more work than it looks like. “Phone”, “late work”, “out”, “phone”, “phone”: after two weeks the pattern is usually one thing, and it is almost never the habit you thought was the problem.
What the sheet does not have is a column for how well you slept. That is deliberate, and there is more on it below.
How to fill it in
- Write your wake time first. The one you can keep on a Saturday as well as a Tuesday. Count back seven or more hours for your bedtime and write that too. If you are not sure where to start, how to start a sleep routine covers the order.
- Pick three habits — five at the very most — from the list at the bottom of the sheet. One strong one, one about the room, and one wind-down step you enjoy.
- Write a time next to each. Count back from your bedtime: the caffeine cut-off about nine hours before, the phone out of the room about an hour before, lights down about forty-five minutes before. “At 10pm, phone on the charger in the kitchen” is a plan; “less phone” is a wish.
- Put it where you will walk past it at that hour. On the bathroom mirror, by the kettle, on the back of the bedroom door. A checklist in a drawer is a checklist you do not use.
The habits to choose from
The sheet carries a short version of this list, strongest evidence first:
| Evidence | Habit | When |
|---|---|---|
| Strong | Same wake time and bedtime | Every day |
| Strong | Caffeine cut-off | About 9 hours before bed |
| Strong | Alcohol cut-off | About 6 hours before bed |
| Moderate | Warm shower or bath | 1–2 hours before bed |
| Moderate | Dark, cool bedroom | All night |
| Moderate | Lights down | About 45 minutes before bed |
| Moderate | Tomorrow’s list, on paper | The last half hour |
| Moderate | Slow breathing or a stretch | The last 15 minutes |
| Moderate | Morning light | Within an hour of waking |
| Moderate | Move during the day | Any time, not hard in the last hour |
| Mixed | Phone outside the bedroom | About an hour before bed |
| Weak | Read on paper | The last 30 minutes |
| Weak | Magnesium | Optional — ask a pharmacist if you take medication |
Why each one is there, minute by minute, is in a bedtime routine for adults. Mouth tape is not on the list: a 2025 review found every study poor quality and some real risk.
Why there is no sleep score column
Almost every sleep printable has a row for “hours slept” or “how did you sleep, 1–10”. We left it off.
A checklist that scores the night turns every night into a test, and the test happens at the worst possible time — lying awake at 3am, already counting what tomorrow will cost. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s advice to people who track their sleep is to “check your sleep data in the morning only, not during the night, and avoid obsessing over nightly results” (AASM, 2026).
The sheet scores the thing you control: whether you did the routine. Fourteen ticks in the “done” row is a result you made, whatever the night did with it.
The night you miss
You will miss one. Mark it with a dash and carry on the next night.
The mistake almost every tracker design encourages is treating a gap as a reset — start again from night one. That rule is wrong, and it is expensive. The best-known habit study found that missing one opportunity did not significantly affect habit formation; what stopped people forming habits was being very inconsistent, which is exactly what giving up after one miss produces. A sheet with twelve ticks and two dashes is a good fortnight.
Paper or phone
Paper is better at the overview. The whole fortnight is visible at once, a pen feels like a small ritual, and it cannot run out of battery or light up with a notification at 10:15pm.
Paper cannot tap you on the shoulder. It will not remind you an hour before bed, it cannot work out your caffeine cut-off when your bedtime moves, and it has no idea that tonight is night thirteen. That is the job RestStack is being built for — the same routine on your phone, every step timed from your bedtime, and a star for every night you keep. It is coming to iPhone and Android, and you can run it in your browser tonight.
Plenty of people will want both: the sheet on the mirror, the reminder in the pocket.
Print it and start tonight
Not on Monday. Tonight.
Download the sleep routine checklist (PDF) — write your times at the top, pick three habits, and tick the first box before bed.
Questions
Is this sleep routine checklist really free?
Yes — one PDF, no email address, no account, no newsletter. Print it as often as you like, for yourself or anyone else. It prints on A4 or US Letter.
How many habits should be on a sleep routine checklist?
Three to five. The sheet has room for five because five is the ceiling, not the target. Every step is a decision at the hour you are worst at making them, and a short list you finish every night does more than a long one you abandon on night three.
Why does the checklist run for 14 nights?
Long enough to see which habit is fighting you, short enough that the grid is not demoralising on night two. Habits take about two months on average to become automatic, so print a fresh sheet every two weeks — and keep the habits that survived.
Why is there no sleep score column?
Because the checklist scores what you did, not how you slept. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's advice to people who track their sleep is to check the data in the morning only and avoid obsessing over nightly results. A sheet you can fail at 3am is not one you keep using.
What do I do on a night I miss?
Mark it with a dash and carry on the next night. The sheet has a mark for a missed night on purpose — it is a square with a different mark in it, not a reason to start again. One missed opportunity does not undo a habit; restarting from zero teaches you that it does.
