[adito]

someone suggest the opposite[1]:

    If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed
    when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you
    more than five minutes to fall asleep each night,
    you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying
    in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem
    is that you’re assuming you need the same number of
    hours of sleep every night, which is a false 
    assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.

    ...

    The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy 
    (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with 
    an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week).

I've done this tips and have good sleep each night (and also become an early riser as side effect).

[1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-ea...

[colkassad]

The only time I fall asleep in less than 5 minutes is if I am completely exhausted. I have to go through a mental winding down period while I lay in bed. Usually through reading or just closing my eyes and thinking about something pleasant. This usually takes me about a half-hour on average. Anyway, from my point of view, I never understand how someone can just lay down and be asleep in a few minutes.

[blazingfrog2]

+1

It's called sleep envy and, some nights when I can hear my wife drift off in minutes and I'm not even close to it, it throws me into that mental tailspin that goes through multiple stages like the whiny "why-me", plain anger, frustration and more. The only result, of course, is an even more delayed start of sleep phase.

[meric]

I count numbers from 1 to X, where X is the number I get to before I fall asleep. I concentrate on the numbers and nothing else. Eventually I get to X and I fall asleep. The speed of counting should fast enough I am not bored, but not so fast that I have to spend effort. The speed varies depending on how close I'm to sleep. The closer I am to sleep the slower I count.

[capedape]

I do the same but I also visualize each number differently; different shapes, textures, sizes. That seems to help engage the monkey chatter and the wacky visualizing takes me closer to dreamland.

Plus one for F.lux, I have it on everything I use but recently I updated my phone to the standard IOS thinking it wouldn't be missed since it was the only Jailbreak tweak on my phone, but now I'm missing it so hard I'm seriously considering an Android and its equivalent app. With F.lux on my phone my light sensitivity was better in the day and sleep was better at night.

[pingou]

Could you please elaborate on your method? Do you decide before hand what X will be? If not, it looks a lot like counting sheep.

[meric]

It's exactly like counting sheep, except counting sheep doesn't work for me. Either every sheep is the same, I get bored and revert to background chatter, or every unique sheep takes too much effort to imagine, I revert to background chatter.

[bumbledraven]

I do math problems in my head.

[gknoy]

Perhaps they read in bed, or otherwise have a calming period (yoga, meditation, etc), before they consider themselves as lying down to sleep. e.g., they lie down in bed, read for $(time), and then put the book away, turn out the lights, and lie down and fall asleep.

[kzrdude]

It's easy, if you exhaust yourself by reading or browsing until you drop. (Not saying it's a good idea, but I do it a lot).

[bane]

I had to opportunity to work one time where the time I came in didn't really matter. I decided to sleep when I was tired and wake when I was refreshed. Over the next few months I started to slowly cycle around the clock as my sleep time shifted about a half hour to an hour later each day and thus did my wake up time. It was a bit strange, but once I got into the rhythm of it...I've never been as productive in my entire career.

[lucian1900]

I've stayed in bed and not fallen asleep until it got light again outside. I am almost never sleepy, it is very annoying.

This advice only works for some people.