Sleep and Rest Toolkit

What this is

About the workbook

Sleep advice usually assumes a life you do not have. This toolkit starts by getting an honest picture of your actual pattern — including shift work, a new baby, or a second job — and builds from there.

Includes a sleep diary and a wind-down structure you can adapt rather than follow exactly.

What is in the pack

Seventeen pages. Two of them are read-once education: "How Sleep Actually Works" and "The Rules That Rebuild Sleep". The rest are pages you write on or keep — a 14-Day Sleep Diary, a Wind-Down Routine Builder, a Racing Thoughts Dump, a Caffeine, Alcohol & Screen Tracker, a Bedroom Environment Checklist, a "My If I Can't Sleep" plan, six cut-out Sleepy-Time Wind-Down Cards, a Morning Review and a Weekly Sleep Review. It closes with a page called "When Sleep Needs More Than Habits", a short closing page, and a page of important information.

The order it suggests

Page two sets out six steps and asks you to take them in that order. Start with the diary and change nothing at all for the first week — the pack calls this collecting a baseline. Then read the two education pages. Then choose one or two changes, not all of them at once, and run those for a week or two before deciding anything about them.

After that: build the wind-down routine, fill in the night plan while you are calm rather than at 3 a.m., and use the weekly review at the end of each diary week to pick what to try next. The pack asks you to give each change one to two weeks, and to read the trend rather than any single night.

The two pages that explain the rest

"How Sleep Actually Works" covers two forces. Sleep pressure builds through every waking hour and gets spent by long or late naps. The body clock reads light rather than your calendar, which is why shifting bedtimes and bright evenings pull it out of position. The page also sets out why a phone in bed works against both forces at once, and why effort applied to falling asleep raises alertness instead of lowering it.

"The Rules That Rebuild Sleep" then lists six habits: keep the bed for sleep, get up if you have been awake around twenty minutes, hold a steady wake time including weekends, get daylight in the first hour, mind caffeine timing, and be careful with naps while your nights are unsettled. The pack states these come from sleep research, and repeats that you are meant to pick one or two of them, not all six.

The pages you print more than once

The diary is designed to be printed twice and labelled Week 1 and Week 2, with one row filled in each morning within an hour of waking. Rough estimates are what it asks for, and it tells you not to watch the clock during the night to be accurate. The Racing Thoughts Dump is reprinted whenever the evening is busy — two columns, what is on your mind and its first small step tomorrow, plus a parking lot for the worries that have no next step.

The Morning Review is a two-minute page you print per day. The Weekly Sleep Review is one page per diary week. The wind-down cards are cut along dashed lines and kept wherever your evenings happen: six practices of roughly two to five minutes each, usable in your routine, in bed with the lights low, or at your out-of-bed spot.

Where it stops

This is educational material. The diary's restedness scale is a 1-to-5 note you make for your own record, and the pack says outright that there are no grades in it. Nothing in the pack screens you, diagnoses anything, or delivers a verdict about you.

"When Sleep Needs More Than Habits" is a list of things worth raising with a healthcare provider: snoring with pauses in breathing, long-running trouble falling or staying asleep, crawling sensations in the legs at night, sleepiness that turns up while you are driving, and any question about starting, stopping or mixing sleep medication. It is a prompt to book an appointment, not a screen, and it suggests bringing your completed diary when you go. The pack also says not to stop or change a prescribed medication on your own.

Who this is for, and who should wait

This is for someone whose nights have drifted — long waits to fall asleep, 3 a.m. waking, a wake time that moves around — and who is willing to keep a diary for two weeks before changing anything. It works for shift workers, new parents and people running two jobs, because the diary asks for rough estimates rather than a perfect schedule, and because the pack asks you to pick one or two habits rather than all six.

Some readers should talk to a healthcare provider first rather than start with the habits. The toolkit's own page lists the signs: loud snoring with pauses in breathing, crawling or restless sensations in the legs at night, sleepiness that intrudes while driving, sleeplessness that has run for months, and any question about starting, stopping or mixing sleep medication. If low mood, heavy worry or dark thoughts have moved in alongside the sleepless nights, bring the toolkit to a clinician rather than working it alone — sleep and mood travel together, and both deserve attention. It is educational material: the diary is a record, not an assessment, and the toolkit is not a treatment programme for insomnia or any sleep disorder.

How it fits with therapy at TEO

The habits in the toolkit — keeping the bed for sleep, getting up after twenty wakeful minutes, a fixed wake time, morning light — are the behavioural core of cognitive behavioural approaches to sleep, and the diary is the same instrument a CBT-informed therapist would ask you to keep. At TEO, Mohamad Shabib and Alison Shaji (British Columbia) both work in CBT, and the sleep therapy page describes how that applies to insomnia and to the worry, trauma or low mood that can sit underneath it.

Therapy adds the parts a toolkit cannot: working out which of the six habits to start with for your particular pattern, dealing with the racing thoughts the dump page only parks, and noticing when a sleep problem is a symptom of something else. Sessions are by video across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador, evenings and weekends included, with a free 15-minute consultation first and individual sessions at $150 per 60-minute session. Two filled-in diary weeks are a useful thing to bring.

Related pages: Sleep and insomnia therapy · Anxiety and stress therapy.

Common questions

About using this workbook

This workbook is educational. It is not therapy, not an assessment, and nothing in it is a diagnosis. If you are in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7); 911 in an emergency. Kids Help Phone (for young people): 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868.

Download the PDF

If you want to go further

Working on this with someone

A workbook can take you a surprising distance on its own. If you would rather not do it alone, TEO offers virtual therapy in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador — evenings and weekends, with a free 15-minute consultation first and no obligation afterward.

Related: Sleep & insomnia therapy.

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