The Sleep Stack: Build Better Bedtime Habits Without Willpower

Damon Stewar is a behavior design researcher and sleep optimization specialist based in Portland, Oregon. He spent over a decade studying how habit formation principles can be applied to sleep health, drawing from research in behavioral psychology, circadian neuroscience, and environmental design. His work focuses on building systems that make healthy sleep automatic — removing the reliance on willpower and replacing it with environments and routines that work with human biology rather than against it.

Stewar's approach is grounded in the principles of habit stacking and implementation intentions, which he has applied across clinical populations including chronic insomnia patients, shift workers, high-performing executives, and parents of young children. He has consulted with corporate wellness programs for organizations including Nike and Providence Health & Services, designing sleep improvement protocols that integrate into existing workplace structures without requiring disruptive schedule changes.

He is the creator of the Sleep Stack Framework, a modular approach to sleep improvement that emphasizes environmental design, behavioral sequencing, and nutritional timing. His writing on sleep optimization has appeared in *Outside Magazine*, *Psychology Today*, and *The Oregonian*. He lives in Portland with his wife and two children, where he practices what he preaches by managing his own sleep stack with a consistent 10:15 PM bedtime and 5:45 AM wake time, year-round.

This is his first book.