Hmmm.

Based on my experience of bad sleep, I'd say altering random mental factors would be more likely to succeed. However, tweaking the stress level at work, or the tendency to dwell on the past, of the concentration of existential angst, are somewhat harder goals to achieve...

Physiological factors such as blood concentration of alcohol, caffeine, serotonin etc. can help - warm milk before bedtime? An old one, but a good one.

I don't think I'm stressing on particular mental phenomena; I do do that from time to time and it's usually more obvious that I'm doing it.

Currently I'm not having any trouble getting to sleep initially, but I wake up at about 4-5am and lie awake for ages. This doesn't incline me to think that pre-bedtime remedies are the answer...

(My boss suggested "number of women" as a variable environmental condition :-) but for me that seems more of a constant at the moment...)

I wake up quite often at 4/5 am. I seem to need the loo and then can't get back to sleep. I think maybe I eat my evening meal too late.

Lighting would be a factor I'd alter, unless your room is already pitch-black.

I would like to get my room darker. I already have excellent very opaque curtains, but quite a lot of light still gets in round the edges of them, and I haven't figured out a way to stop that yet.

The loo thing does really annoy me sometimes - I often wake up at 7am needing the loo, and then my body thinks it isn't worth going back to sleep for just one more hour, so I end up consistently dropping an hour's sleep. At such times I tend to feel I'd rather my bladder were either two hours smaller (as it were) or one hour bigger, but is precisely the wrong size as it is. But at the moment that doesn't seem to be the problem...

Come round to Impropriety and check out my l33t cardboard engineering - I've fixed exactly that problem with impressive effectiveness :)

YA Al Pacino AICM5P.

Temperature is most likely in the 4-5am waking slot. It could also be stress, but if you don't think you're that stressed, it might well not be. I take it you have proper dark curtains?

Yes, I have, although I still want to find a way to stop so much light getting in round the edges.

I'm currently leaning towards temperature as the most likely possibility, yes. I do have a heater in my bedroom, but I'm never convinced it does very much so I haven't got round to turning it on yet. Plan A is to give it a try anyway.

I suspect if you succeeded in changing the number of women then you might not find it helped you get any more sleep.

There is that ;-) although by the time I'm lying awake in the middle of the night getting annoyed by my inability to go back to sleep, I often think a comforting cuddle would be just what I could do with. (Mind you, if there were a woman with me, then by Murphy's Law she'd be fast asleep and unwilling to wake up and provide one, of course.)

But if you changed the number of women you might not *mind* not getting back to sleep. ;)
and clearly the balance of elements including the fifth one, custard, is the most important thing. I quote you on this:
"Insert custard at your discretion
by means of a flexible hose
And see if you cause a recession
before it comes out of your nose."

That one always annoyed me. The recession line was the first thing I thought of that rhymed and scanned sensibly, but ten minutes after I sent it to you I realised that "see if it cures your depression" would be much better since it's actually something one might (just about) attempt to do by application of custard! :-) Esprit d'escalier strikes again...

But that would make far too much sense! I much prefer the implication that I could fit all the custard in the world inside me and thus send the economy into a decline.

Only two weeks?

What *colour* custard concentration?

(Memories of school dinners suggests that pink is worse than yellow. Partly because yellow school dinner custard was nicer than pink school dinner custard, but mainly because the only pink custard I remember seeing was school dinner custard.)