What is Cognitive Shuffling for Sleep? I Tried the Viral TikTok Insomnia Hack for a Week

Every night around 11:30 p.m., my brain decides it’s time to solve everything. A passive-aggressive email I got two years ago? Time to analyze it. A weird freckle on my arm? Better Google it. The awkward conversation I had six days ago? Let’s replay it frame by frame.

In short: my mind loves to throw a party exactly when I need it to shut down.

I’ve tried many things to soothe my pre-bedtime anxiety. But as a health writer who’s also an insomniac, I love trying new sleep hacks. So when I stumbled across something called cognitive shuffling, I just had to try it.

Cognitive shuffling, recently popularized by TikTok, is a mental technique that involves jumbling up neutral words or images to bore your brain to sleep.

Spoiler: it worked fairly well. Here’s what you need to know about cognitive shuffling for sleep, how to do it, and what happened when I tried it for a week. 

Cognitive shuffling is a sleep technique that involves mentally rearranging random, neutral words or images to gently distract your brain and help you fall asleep. It’s also called Serial Diverse Imagining (SDI).

This technique was created by cognitive scientist Dr. Luc Beaudoin, who developed the approach as part of his Somnolent Information Processing Theory. The idea? Just as storytelling can wake the brain up, aimless, non-emotional wordplay can lull it into rest. Think of it as white noise for your thoughts.

You know when you’re on the verge of falling asleep and you feel your thoughts getting weirder, more fragmented, and more nonsensical? Cognitive shuffling basically mimics that. Before you know it, your random mumblings will become more and more dream-like until you fall asleep. 

When you mentally focus on emotionally neutral, unrelated words — like lamp, turtle, pizza, socks— you occupy just enough of your cognitive bandwidth to prevent anxious overthinking, but not enough to stimulate the brain’s problem-solving mode.

It’s thought to work because our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, worrying, and making decisions, needs cohesive thoughts to stay “on.” Cognitive shuffling interrupts that cohesion and lowers cognitive arousal — exactly what we want at bedtime.

It’s why this technique is gaining traction in the realm of cognitive shuffling for sleep and being recommended by sleep therapists as a simple, screen-free tool. The cognitive shuffle sleep method works best when your mind is overstimulated, especially during classic insomnia spirals. 

Here’s how to try cognitive shuffling for sleep:

1. Choose a simple, non-emotional word
   Think: apple, lemon, tiger, bread. Avoid anything emotionally charged or mentally stimulating — so, not the name of your high school bully, an emotion, or a word that reminds you of that looming work deadline.
   
   

2. Take each letter of the word and think of a few new words that start with that letter
   For example, for goat, you’ll start with G and think about the words game, glen, Georgia, giraffe, goods, groceries…
   
   

3. Take each letter of the word and think of a few new words that start with that letter
   When you’re done with one letter, move on to the next one (in this case, O — orange, organ, ox, oval, Ottoman…).
   
   

4. Visualize each word briefly
   Imagine the object or idea for a second or two. No need to build a story or connect them.
   
   

5. Keep the pace slow and steady
   Let your thoughts wander gently from one image to the next. It should feel dreamy, not logical.
   
   

Pro tip: Stick to 5- or 6-letter words with concrete images. It’s easier to think about nouns and everyday objects.

Cognitive shuffling is a useful tool, but it’s not magic. For best results, pair it with good sleep hygiene practices.

Some basic sleep hygiene principles include:

• Keeping your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet

• Avoiding screens 30–60 minutes before bed

• Going to bed and waking up at consistent times

• Limiting caffeine and alcohol before bedtime

If you regularly find it hard to sleep even when you practice good sleep hygiene, you might benefit from speaking with a doctor or a therapist. 

As a health writer, I’m pretty skeptical of TikTok wellness trends — especially ones promising to fix insomnia, which I’ve experienced on and off for the past decade.

But I’m always up for a challenge, and I love experiments . So I decided to try cognitive shuffling for myself.

Night 1: I picked the word lemon. Got through maybe three letters before I forgot where I was in the shuffle. I ended up side-tracked by thinking about my to-do list. I then switched to panda and fell asleep pretty quickly.

Night 2: I struggled to pick a word and got too focused on doing it “right.” Took longer to fall asleep.

Night 3: I switched to tiger. Once again, I found myself distracted by thoughts of my to-do list, but I gently brought my attention back to shuffling.

I had some strange dreams — but they weren’t unpleasant, and I felt like I slept deeply.

Night 4: Using the word silver, I fell asleep relatively quickly. I then woke up at 3 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep. Did a few rounds of word-shuffling. It worked — I dozed off without doomscrolling. Win.

Night 5: I found myself actually looking forward to bed. Throughout the afternoon, I debated which word to use. I eventually settled on the word cloud — quite a fun one!

Night 6: After my cat woke me up at 5 AM, I briefly considered getting up and starting my day. Instead, I started doing some word-shuffling to get back to sleep. It worked super quickly.

Night 7: I picked candle. Visualized cupcakes, cows, cameras — it felt like a cozy mental walk, like I was coaching myself to fall into a lovely, comfy dream. I don’t quite remember when I fell asleep, but I managed to sleep well. 

After just a week of trying this out, I was pretty impressed by what it could do for me.

Here are my main takeaways:

• It actually helped quiet my mind. I didn’t expect such a simple trick to cut through my anxiety, but it often did. I stopped spiraling into to-do lists and regrets.

• It works during midnight wake-ups. This doesn’t just work for falling asleep — it also works for returning to sleep if you’ve been disturbed, which can be pretty challenging!

• It helped me look forward to sleeping. I often feel anxious at the thought of going to bed, even if I’m exhausted. But I found myself gently looking forward to these mental games, which is a welcome change.

• It’s strangely playful. Visualizing a napkin or a giraffe isn’t as boring as literally counting sheep. It’s just silly enough to distract you without stimulating your brain too much.

Of course, it isn’t a silver bullet, and it didn’t stop me from waking up throughout the night — but it was a useful and easy tool for falling back asleep. 

After seven nights, I found that cognitive shuffling helped me fall asleep faster with less anxiety. Was it a miracle? No. But it’s a low-effort, surprisingly effective tool.

If you’re looking for a simple way to fall asleep faster — or just tame the bedtime brain circus — give the cognitive shuffle sleep method a try.

And if you’re still tossing and turning, consider exploring additional tools like SnoreLessNow’s Slumber Patch, a patch designed to promote deeper sleep. If your snoring (or your partner’s snoring) is part of the problem, check out their innovative snore solutions to help both of you sleep better.

Your brain deserves rest. And with a little shuffle? It might finally get it.

The content in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a licensed healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment options. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalized medical advice or concerns about snoring, sleep disorders, or related health issues.