6 guaranteed ways to sleep on an airplane

I'm a career insomniac, which means I'm familiar with TNT's overnight programming schedule and have a list of regrettable 3 a.m. Etsy purchases. But the nights that I do sleep are glorious and perfect and – weirdly enough – they tend to happen more frequently when I travel. Why? It's either because traveling makes me plan and prepare for the best possible sleeping conditions or because I'm away from my awful upstairs neighbor and her middle-of-the-night P90X workouts (DO YOU HEAR ME, JOAN? BECAUSE I HEAR YOU AND YOUR JUMPING JACKS ARE TERRIBLE).

So here are my best tips for getting the best possible sleep when you're on the road or in the air:

1) Do your homework. Before you book your flight, look at SeatGuru to help you find the seats that are the least terrible. Whenever possible, you'll want to avoid anything near the back of the plane, because an endless parade of people going to the bathroom isn't going to help you rest and neither will the rattle of the beverage cart or the smell of microwaveable meat. Exit row seats sound great in theory for the extra half-inch of legroom, but in a lot of planes, those seats don't recline – and neither does the row of seats in front of them.

2) Work the system. If you're traveling with a partner, choose a window and an aisle seat in the same row. Most single travelers aren't going to want to sit in the middle so – unless the flight is totally sold out – there's a good chance that you'll get a whole row. And if the flight is sold out, your neighbor will surely be happy to trade seats. If you're flying alone, check the seat map the day before you fly or right before you check in online. Best case, you could swap your seat to an empty (or emptier) row. That's how I claimed an entire middle row for myself on a recent overnight flight to London and I slept so well, I couldn't hear everyone else hating me.

3) Pack the right accessories. You'll also want to pack the standard "Leave Me Alone" accessory kit: an eye mask, earplugs and/or noise-canceling headphones. I also always take a hoodie in my carry-on bag, because it's insanely versatile. You can roll it into the hood and make an extra pillow or wear it backwards to block out even more light and to further alienate your fellow travelers.

4) Apps and playlists are a traveler's best friend. There's nothing like a white noise app to drown out the shrieking infant in row 37 or to help you ignore the sound of the hotel's ancient radiator. My favorite is an iPhone app called Sleep Machine that has all kinds of restful sounds like ocean waves and thunderstorms and the sort of generic world music they play in that weird massage place at the mall.

5) Light is your worst enemy. When you board the plane, dim the brightness on your seatback screen and/or the brightness on your iPad or iPhone. There have been a number of studies about how the 'blue light' on those iDevices keeps us awake because it keeps our brains from producing sleep-inducing melatonin.

6) Don't drink and fly. Sure, having a couple of glasses of screw-top Merlot from the beverage cart might make you feel a little drowsy, but chances are, you'll be even more restless when it wears off. Also, the first night of your vacation is not the time to experiment with medication, over-the-counter or not. If you're trying melatonin or other sleep aids, do it before you leave home to find out if it works, if it makes you groggy or if it makes you more likely to tell the flight crew about every bad decision you've ever made.

Now shhhh. Close your eyes, put your headphones on an--SERIOUSLY, JOAN? YOU'RE DOING THAT WORKOUT NOW?