Babysteps! That’s a great name. And a great approach to take with regard to meditation. I often recommend to my students that they should consider learning to meditate like learning to walk. Give it a year! And don’t kick yourself, because you’re still thinking after your second meditation. This is like kicking an infant because it’s not walking on day 2 of it’s life!

Over time, you may find that thinking isn’t such a compulsion, but thinking won’t actually ever stop for long. As it’s in the nature of the sun to shine, it’s in the nature of your mind to think. Trying to stop yourself from thinking is like grabbing the garden hose and trying to extinguish the sun! Treat thinking like one of your senses. Yes, sometimes we hear and see stuff we don’t like. But we don’t then expect to be able to stop ourselves from seeing and hearing. Similarly, we may recognise that our thoughts can cause us considerable grief, but we need to also recognise that banishing thoughts from the mind is not possible. A more helpful approach is to befriend those thoughts – to establish a harmonious relationship with them – or simply to attend to something else, such as sounds, the body or breath.

With regard to sleep, I left a few comments here: http://mydiamonddays.com/meditation/matts-simple-introductory-meditation-again/#comment-67

Of course, if you suffer from insomnia, and you want to get to sleep, then meditating in bed is just what you need. People often find that they get to sleep more quickly and have a deeper and more restful sleep following a late evening meditation. I sometimes listen to a guided meditation in bed if I find that my thinking is keeping me awake.

Of course, if you’re wanting to generate a clearer, calmer and more energised state of mind, there are a whole host of active meditations which might be better suited to that purpose. Meditating before a long day at work, rather than late in the evening, will also help.

Finally, a consistent time and place for meditation can help to develop a habit. If you meditate every day at the same time, and set up a little routine or ‘ritual’ you’ll begin to associate that time and space with being a little more tuned into yourself and your needs and all the other things you associate with meditation. However, this can also make feeling relaxed dependent upon this same time and place. Some meditators even begin to resent interruptions to their meditation sessions – and get cranky because they missed their meditation fix!

So, by all means, establish a routine if that helps – but, and this is IMPORTANT, bring the skills you learn from meditation into your daily life. Integrate them into life at work and home. Stuck in the traffic? Breathe a little. Feeling flustered? Do something to relax your body; roll your shoulders, shake out some tension.

There are dozens and dozens of opportunities to relax every day. If we let these opportunities pass us by we accumulate stress, ‘lose it’ more frequently and eventually burn out. By integrating ‘mini’ or ‘spot’ meditations into our day we can more easily retain our sense of poise and balance.