What are tips and strategies for creating an effective night routine for a good night’s sleep?

As a Certified Sleep Science Coach I can tell you that:

A regular quality sleep habit is absolutely critical for your health and well-being:

As a leading sleep medicine researcher put it recently:

“Regular poor sleep puts you at risk of serious medical conditions, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy.

“It’s now clear that a solid night’s sleep is essential for a long and healthy life.”

Source: A 'catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic' is killing us, warns leading scientist

And the real key to building a great evening sleep-readiness routine, so you get the high quality sleep you need - is to effectively plan and implement a:

1- 90 Minute Gradual Wind Down Before You Actually Go to Bed:

What you want to do here is reverse pyramid the amount of light, stress and stimulus exposure you’re body and senses receive.

That means things like:

Turning off all unnecessary lights. Make sure to leave on enough light for safely moving around your living space and sleep sanctuary.
You also want to have just enough light for reading a relaxing book before bed.
Turning off all Electronics an hour before bed. For one thing, electronics like your TV, smart phone and computer are major sources of artificial light. And all that blue light can severely interfere with your brains natural way of slowly shutting down for sleep.
Not only that but when it comes to TV for example, night time programming in most places is the most stimulating and stressful there is (i.e. singing and dance competitions and high energy mini-series).
Make Your Sleep Sanctuary as Dark as Possible. When it’s time to actually go to sleep you want to make sure that every light source is turned off. It’s a good idea to have thick blinds or curtains to keep outdoor light form interrupting your sleep. You can even cover your windows with a thick blanket - and if worse comes to worse use a sleep mask to keep the artificial light out.
Learn More Here: Despite sleeping for 7-8 hours every night, I feel extremely sleepy each morning. How do I change this?

Source: My Quora Answer.

Master The Instant Relaxation Technique: After a day filled with both positive and negative stress, you also want to gradually reduce the activity level of your nervous system.

A great way to really prepare your mind and body for a full 7–9 hours of high quality sleep, is to learn how to turn on your body’s own deep relaxation response.

And the Instant Relaxation Technique allows you to start entering directly into a deep state of relaxation literally in seconds after a few weeks of practice.

Remember building a great sleep habit can take weeks if not months to really turn into a solid habit.

So How does the Instant Relaxation Technique Work?

It’s actually a combination of fast relaxation breathing and a technique called PMR or progressive muscle relaxation. It’s a powerful easy to learn life hack that can have positive effects across literally every area of your life.

Ideally you want to start practicing the Instant Relaxation Technique during the day at first until you start get the sense that you’re really able to become quickly relaxed while using.

Note: Always consult your family Doctor before trying any new health, wellness, diet or exercise strategy.

It’s a good idea to practice through out the day, as well - on breaks or at any time you feel yourself getting stressed out, angry or anxious.

My Step-by-Step Quick Study Guide for The Instant Relaxation Technique: What are some sleep hacks and tips?

Source: My Quora Answer.

Once you’ve really mastered quickly turning on your relaxation response, you can then use it in the 10 or so minutes before bed to fall asleep faster, deeper and longer. You may also want to practice relaxation 30–60 minutes before you go to bed. I like to intersperse my relaxation practice with:

Gentle Gratitude Practice:

This is where I literally go over some of the so called small things and life that so many people take for granted but which, in my view are really incredible blessings.

For example, our ability to see, hear and feel. Our ability to deeply connect with others. Having great healthy food to eat, even things as seemingly simple as having a blanket and pillow to rest on.

Not only is a positive mind set through gratitude practice a great way to de-stress for a great night's sleep.

It also rewires your brain to see the positive throughout the day as well.

You start seeing opportunities instead of problems - and really seeing and feeling the good in the people around you.

That means the more you practice gratitude, the more you default to positivity instead of negativity. Study after study shows that simple gratitude exercises, like keeping a journal or sharing daily wins with friends or family, can make you happier, more positive, and more emotionally open after just two weeks [1,2,3]. The benefits last, too [4], which leads to an overall increase in well-being, making you stronger and more resilient to stress [5]. That’s a lot of improvement for 10 minutes a day.

Here’s a guide to gratitude, along with 11 ways you can build gratefulness into your daily life:

Source and Gratitude Guide: Use Gratitude to Rewire Your Brain

Setup a Next Day Parking Lot for Work Issues and Stressors:

Sometimes thoughts and worries about work and other parts of our day can impinge on our thinking, increasing our stress levels and preventing us from quickly and easily falling asleep.

One cognitive strategy that I’ve found incredibly helpful is to visualize an imaginary parking lot.

When ever a stressful thought surfaced, I’d then imagine that it was a car, park it the the stress parking lot, and then get back to my deep relaxation and gentle gratitude practice.

I’ve also found it really helpful to assign a specific time slot for the next day to think about and process the stressful thoughts I’d parked.

For example, the next day during the cardio portion of my workout on the elliptical machine was a great time. I could creatively problem solve, at the same time using the stress to fuel my workout while at the same time metabolizing the stress chemicals through my cardio.

Now if you really want to maximize the effects of reverse pyramiding your light, stimulus and stress levels before bed, it’s also a good idea to explore:

Reverse Pyramiding Your Food and Fluid Intake in the 4–6 or so Hours Before Sleep:

Trying to sleep with a stomach full or rich food can make falling a sleep a real challenge.

Drinking too much fluid right before bed can also lead to frequent wake-ups and bathroom visits.

But be careful to stay hydrated by drinking lots of healthy fluids earlier during your day with increasing moderation before bedtime, because dehydration can be a major source of poor sleep quality.

Many people realize that their level of hydration can affect the way they feel and function throughout the day. A lack of fluids can make you sluggish, irritable, and off your game. But hydration also plays a critical role in how well (or not) you sleep at night. Understanding the impact of your daily fluid intake on your nighttime slumber will go a long way to improving the quality of your sleep.

Link to learn more: The Connection Between Hydration and Sleep

Reverse Pyramid Your Exercise Frequency, Intensity Duration as Your Day Progresses:

Not only is having a great (physician permitted) morning exercise routine amazing for your physical health, but it’s also been shown to improve night time sleep quality.

It can also be great to go for a light stress-busting walk or two in the afternoon or to take the stairs instead of the elevator etc.. but you want to be sure to decrease the intensity and duration of your physical activity levels starting in the afternoon.

For example, it’s better have your main workout in the morning or early afternoon and increasingly lighter exercise in the later afternoon. Some sleep experts recommend light stretching before bed as well, to help relax your muscles and to improve circulation.

Another critically important way of reducing your evening stimulus levels for better sleep is to:

Institute a Complete Caffeine Ban after 2PM:

I know that’s much easier said than done. But just like bright artificial light and stressfull TV shows, caffeine is major source of nervous system stimulation.

And it can take several hours for your body to metabolize and eliminate the caffeine you drink. For some people with medical conditions or slower metabolisms - it can actually take up to 12 hours!

Strategic Napping:

If you don’t get the expert recommended 7-9 hours of high quality sleep, it may actually be a good idea to to take a short strategic nap in the early afternoon to make up for it.

Strategic napping can also help buffer the negative cognitive performance effects if you know you feel a high level of fatigue in the during the day or if you have a long night of work or study planned.

How long is the ideal strategic nap?

The ideal strategic nap length is aprox 30-40 minutes. Napping longer than that or napping too late in the day (early afternoon is best) can lead to difficulty falling asleep at your normal bedtime.

For example:

Naps can restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%.
Source: Napping

Take a Warm Bath or Shower About 1.5 Hours Before Bed:

Sleep Revolutionist Arianna Huffington (see her post in this thread) actually recommends taking a hot bath with epsom salt dissolved in it to help you’re muscles and your mind deeply unwind.

And as Dr. Mercola recently pointed out your body’s process of “thermoregulation - your body’s heat distribution system” is deeply involved in the regulation of your sleep cycle.

After a relaxing hot bath, your body actually experiences a steep drop in temperature, which tells your sleep physiology that it’s time to really turn on.

And it’s for this very same reason that you want to keep your sleep sanctuary (your bedroom) cool while you sleep. The ideal temperature for sleeping is “60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Read A Relaxing Book Before Bedtime:

Here’s another great suggestion from Arianna Huffington. Reading with just enough light about 30 to 60 minutes before bed (especially if you’re overcoming a night time TV addiction) is a great way to wind down before sleep.

Make sure to read something relaxing though - no cliff hangers or suspense novels.

Here are some great books to help build your new healthy sleep habit:

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time - as Recommend by me.
how to build an amazing sleep habit
Sleep Soundly Every Night,
Feel Fantastic Every Day
The Promise of Sleep and
Say Good Night to Insomnia as recommend by Sleep.org
Hope that helps!