Cognitive Shuffling for Sleep
Reviewed by Dr. Nicholas Gehle, Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist (FL PY8489) · Updated
You're in bed, the lights are off, and your mind is running through tomorrow, or last week, or something that may never happen. The cognitive shuffle doesn't argue with those thoughts. It gives your mind something random and boring to do instead. It might help you drift off, and it has been studied far less than other approaches to sleeplessness.
What is the cognitive shuffle?
The cognitive shuffle, or cognitive shuffling, means picturing a string of random, unrelated things, one at a time, for a few seconds each. The idea comes from cognitive scientist Luc Beaudoin, who calls it "serial diverse imagining" (Beaudoin, 2013). The images are meant to be disconnected. You aren't building a story or solving anything.
Cognitive models of insomnia treat effortful, looping thought at bedtime as part of what keeps people awake, and pushing a thought away takes effort too (Harvey, 2002). The shuffle takes a different route. The thinking behind it is that worry needs a coherent thread to run on, and a parade of unrelated images gives it nothing to grab. Beaudoin also proposed that the loose, disconnected images may resemble the drifting thoughts many people notice as they fall asleep (Beaudoin, 2013).
What you need: your bed, the lights off, and 5 to 15 minutes.
How to do the cognitive shuffle, step by step
Step 1: Settle in
Lie in your usual sleeping position, lights off, eyes closed, phone out of reach.
Step 2: Pick a neutral word
Choose any random, emotionally neutral word. Say "piano." Avoid words tied to whatever you were worrying about.
Step 3: Picture something for its first letter
Take the first letter, P, and picture something that starts with it. A pumpkin. Just see it for a few seconds. Don't build a story around it.
Step 4: Move on
When the image fades or you get bored, picture another P word, unrelated to the last. A paperclip. A pigeon. A porch.
Step 5: Change letters and keep going
When P runs dry, move to the next letter, I, and keep going. If you lose your place, pick any letter. The point isn't to finish the word. It's to drift off partway through.
If you want it guided
In your head, the shuffle can drift back into a story: the pumpkin turns into pumpkin bread turns into the groceries. Strua's Cognitive Shuffle works a little differently from the letter method: you pick a theme (there are ten, from household objects to beach and ocean), and one word appears on screen every few seconds, so you don't have to come up with them. A session runs 5 to 15 minutes and is built for lying in the dark. It's free with a Strua account and works in your web browser. You can use a whole tool before you sign up for an account (four are open to try first); this one isn't among the four. No chatbot and no AI-generated advice.
Create a free account to use Cognitive ShuffleAdapting it, and when to choose something else
- If you keep thinking about the words: skip the naming. Just see things, without labeling them.
- If you can't think of anything: with your eyes still closed, picture the objects in your room, one at a time.
- If a worry slips in: that's expected. Come back to the next image.
If the shuffle makes you more alert rather than less, stop. It isn't right for every night. When your body is the loudest thing in the room, a body-first route may suit you better, such as a body scan, where you move your attention through the body without tensing anything.
If you've been fully, frustratedly awake for a long stretch, many sleep clinicians suggest getting up briefly, doing something calm and dim, and going back to bed when you feel drowsy. This is the idea behind stimulus control (Bootzin, 1972).
Does cognitive shuffling work? What the research says, and what it doesn't
The honest answer: it might help, but it has been studied far less than other approaches to sleeplessness, so treat it as something to try rather than a proven fix.
The closest well-studied evidence is about imagery in general. In one study, people with insomnia who were taught to distract themselves with neutral imagery fell asleep faster than people given general distraction or no instructions (Harvey & Payne, 2002). That tested imagery distraction, not the shuffle itself.
Beaudoin introduced serial diverse imagining in a conference abstract (Beaudoin, 2013). A later conference study assigned 154 students who reported busy minds at bedtime to the shuffle at bedtime, problem-solving earlier in the evening, or both. All three groups reported improvements, and the shuffle did about as well as problem-solving (Beaudoin et al., 2016). That study had no untreated comparison group, so it can't show how much of the change came from the technique itself. Conference abstracts also get less scrutiny than full journal articles.
Put together, the shuffle is low-cost and easy to try, and the reasoning behind it fits cognitive models of insomnia (Harvey, 2002). It isn't a treatment for insomnia.
Full References
- Beaudoin, L. P. (2013). The possibility of super-somnolent mentation: A new information-processing approach to sleep-onset acceleration and insomnia exemplified by serial diverse imagining. Sleep, 36, Abstract Supplement, A249.
- Beaudoin, L. P., Digdon, N., O'Neill, K., & Rachor, G. (2016, June). Serial diverse imagining task: A new remedy for bedtime complaints of worrying and other sleep-disruptive mental activity. In Sleep (Vol. 39, Supplement). Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
- Bootzin, R. R. (1972). Stimulus control treatment for insomnia. Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, 7, 395–396.
- Edinger, J. D., Arnedt, J. T., Bertisch, S. M., Carney, C. E., Harrington, J. J., Lichstein, K. L., Sateia, M. J., Troxel, W. M., Zhou, E. S., Kazmi, U., Heald, J. L., & Martin, J. L. (2021). Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 17(2), 255–262. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986
- Harvey, A. G. (2002). A cognitive model of insomnia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(8), 869–893. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00061-4
- Harvey, A. G., & Payne, S. (2002). The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: Distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(3), 267–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00012-2
When it's more than a bad night
A racing mind at bedtime is a common sleep complaint, and on its own it isn't a diagnosis. If it's happening most nights for months and wearing down your days, that's worth raising with a clinician. A sleep specialist can talk with you about behavioral treatment such as CBT-I, the first-line approach in sleep medicine guidelines (Edinger et al., 2021). For more on night-time thinking, see our guide to why your brain won't shut off at night. If you're in crisis in the US, you can call or text 988 anytime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an app to do the cognitive shuffle?
No. The steps above work entirely in your head. Strua's guided version is for nights when coming up with words yourself is too much; it runs in your web browser and needs a free account.