Just this year I learned an invaluable lesson about falling asleep. When my brain starts "daydreaming" random chains of thoughts, just let it do that. I used to try to clear my mind, but the opposite seems to work much better for me.
Sometime over the last few years I started to notice I was moments away from falling asleep because my stream of consciousness would become nonsensical. I then discovered I could fall asleep faster by purposefully daydreaming nonsensical sceneries.
