ADHD evening routine: wind down and pick tomorrow's start
It's 11:40. You said you'd go to bed an hour ago. The dishes are half done, your phone is warm in your hand, and the moment you lie down your head starts listing everything you forgot today. An ADHD evening routine won't turn you into an early sleeper. What it can do is give the night a clear ending and give tomorrow a place to start, so you don't have to hold both in your head.
This one has three small steps, and a one-step version for the nights when three is too many.
Why winding down can be hard with ADHD
You're far from alone if nights go sideways. In a 2024 study of 3,691 adults diagnosed with ADHD, published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, about 60% screened positive for a sleep disorder. The most common were symptoms of delayed sleep phase syndrome (36%) and insomnia (30%).
CHADD lists several things that can get in the way, including a delayed internal wake-sleep cycle, restless legs and caffeine. It also says stimulant medication can interfere with falling asleep. If sleep stays hard, bring it to your doctor or pharmacist before you change anything. A routine can make evenings easier, but it can't tell you why you aren't sleeping.
Knowing this can take some of the blame out of a bad night, and it's one more reason to keep the routine short.
Step 1: give the evening an ending
Evenings don't come with a bell. Nobody tells you that today is over, so it can drift on until you run out of battery.
Set one alarm for the time you'd like to start landing. Pick a sound you don't hate. When it goes off, do one thing that means the day is closing: dim the lights, or put your phone on its charger across the room.
The NHS suggests staying off phones, tablets and computers for an hour before bed, and going to bed and getting up at similar times each day. CHADD says adults can read, work on a hobby or dim the lights before bed. An hour without a screen may be a long way from where you are now. Ten minutes still counts, and you can make it longer later if you want to.
Step 2: get tomorrow out of your head
This is the step for the 11:40 list. Before bed, take a scrap of paper and write down what's still rattling around. Don't sort it. Don't turn it into a plan. Just get it onto the page.
The NHS suggests this too: if you often worry in bed, make a list of what you need to do the next day before you go to sleep. There's a little research behind it as well. In a study led by Michael Scullin at Baylor University, 57 young adults spent five minutes before bed writing either a to-do list or a list of tasks they had already finished. The to-do list group fell asleep more quickly.
Please hold that lightly. It was a small study of healthy young adults, so it can't tell us much about ADHD. Still, it costs five minutes and a pen, so it may be worth a try.
Step 3: pick tomorrow's first tiny step
Look at your list and choose one thing for tomorrow. Then shrink it until it's almost silly. "Sort out the taxes" becomes "open the folder." "Call the dentist" becomes "find the number."
Write that step somewhere you'll see it in the morning, like a sticky note on your charger. That's the whole step. Think of it as a note for a sleepy person who won't want to think. We wrote more about that hand-off in our short ADHD morning routine.
What to do on a low tide night
Some nights you get home wrecked and the idea of a routine is a bit funny. On those nights, the three steps shrink to one. Write down the first tiny step for tomorrow, or plug in your phone, or brush your teeth. Pick whichever feels least heavy.
And if your head gets loud once you're in bed, the NHS says to try not to force sleep. If you're still awake after around 20 minutes, get up, sit somewhere comfortable and do something relaxing, then go back to bed when you feel sleepy.
If you skip the whole thing for a week, start again with one step. Nothing here is overdue.
An evening landing in Low Tide
We built this into Low Tide, our one-page Notion planner. It has a three-step evening landing to match the three-step morning launch, a brain dump for whatever's still in your head, and a Today board where every task gets a first tiny step. There are no due dates, so a messy night doesn't leave anything waiting to scold you.
Tonight, try one step. One tiny step at a time.
Wall of Okay makes planning tools, not medical advice. If ADHD is making life hard, a doctor or therapist can help you find what works for you.