In my 4-year-long quest for rest, I thought I'd tried everything: herbal supplements, yoga poses, Sleepytime tea, 360-thread-count sheets, imagery, deep breathing, feng shui-ing the bedroom, alcohol, no alcohol, firm pillows, fluffy pillows, no pillows, four pillows. Trying to sleep less never crossed my mind. But according to a growing number of experts, including Edward Stepanski, PhD, director of the Sleep Disorder Service at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, simply limiting my time in bed could help.

Stepanski's version of sleep restriction is a type of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) that teaches different ways of thinking about and dealing with the problem. The idea is to cut down on the time you spend lying awake in bed so that eventually all you do there is sleep. The goal: uninterrupted rest, even if it's only a couple of hours. "When your sleep is broken up, you feel lousy," says Stepanski, who is chairman of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Committee of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the folks who set the standards for treatment of sleep disorders. Most people who have trouble sleeping make the mistake of staying in bed too long—turning in early, tossing fitfully, trying to doze off, or repeatedly hitting the snooze button. "If you can teach your body to get 7 hours of sleep out of 7 hours in bed, you'll feel better than if you have 7 hours of sleep out of 10 hours in bed," Stepanski says. The theory holds that if you can keep your body slightly deprived, you can increase your ability to sleep soundly. "Cutting back on your time in bed is the most effective change insomniacs can make," he says.

Lured by the chance of sleep success without pills, I scheduled a meeting with Stepanski. At his request, during the 2 weeks before my appointment, I recorded my every waking (and sleeping) moment. Some nights I slept 7 hours straight, but usually I woke up at 2 a.m. and struggled to get back to sleep. I made up for the deficit by taking naps during the day, but I never really felt rested, and I worried about sleeping (or not) morning, noon, and, well, night.

During my first appointment, Stepanski reviewed my logs. His diagnosis: primary insomnia, or sleeplessness caused by stress. Tracking my energy levels, he determined that I functioned best on 7 hours of sleep. Since I wanted to get up at 7 a.m., Stepanski set my bedtime at midnight—no crashing earlier even if I was tired. The rest of his 6-week plan involved following the basic ground rules of what the experts call good sleep hygiene: no work after 10:30 p.m., no sedating medication of any kind (even over-the-counter aids were out), no snooze button, and no naps. Also key to success was keeping a sleep log. It sounded simple enough, but I knew it wouldn't—couldn't—be that easy. And it wasn't. Just take a look at how my 6 weeks went.