I must have noise to go along with going to sleep. Usually thats an audio book or long-form video essay type YouTube videos. I wear one earbud to bed if I’m sleeping at night with my girlfriend or just blare it from the TV if I’m sleeping alone during the day (rotating shift). I feel like when I don’t have engaging audio and I’m trying to sleep I can’t quiet my mind enough to sleep. A fan or random ambient noise isn’t enough for me.
I’ve had some success with binaural beats. It’s two pure sin wave tones - one in each ear. The tones are out of tune with each other so it has a bit of a wavy or pulsing sound. But they’re close enough to sound like one note and not two. Apparently the difference between these two waves gets entrained into your brain waves even though you can’t hear it. My favorites are 94 hz carrying a 3 hz differential, 96 hz carrying a 4hz differential, and 115 hz carrying a 5 hz differential. I’m using an app called Binaural Beat Gen by TMSOFT. Anyway the very low brain waves are delta waves associated with deep sleep. In a way, it’s hacking your brain to sleep.
Interesting, I think that was an aspect of a type of therapy I did years ago. EMDR if I remember right, could be completely wrong though.