Waking to the number of sleep cycles

Recently I’ve been using the sleep cycle calculator at bedtime to calculate what time I should be waking up. And it’s been a gamer-changer for my sleep scores, and ultimately, how rested I feel.

All along for the past few years since I joined the 5am club, I’ve set my wake time at 4:40AM, no matter what time I went to bed. Sometimes I slept earlier, sometimes later. That results in varying amounts of sleep, and oftentimes I would wake in the middle of a sleep cycle, which made it harder to wake. Based on the sleep cycle calculater, if I want to wake at 4:40AM, I should ideally be sleeping by 9:10PM. I usually never do. And I wake up grumpy, and later on, feeling sleepy. That all makes sense now.

So now I key in the time of my bedtime, in order to figure out my daylight alarm the next morning. I get this from the app:

I plan to fall asleep at 9:30PM

Recommendation: You should try to wake up at one of the following times:

1. Wake at 2:00AM for 3 Cycles - 4.5h of sleep
2. Wake at 3:30AM for 4 Cycles - 6h of sleep
3. Wake at 5:00AM for 5 Cycles - 7.5h of sleep
4. Wake at 6:30AM for 6 Cycles - 9h of sleep

Please keep in mind that you should be waking up at these times. The average human takes fourteen minutes to wake up, so plan accordingly!

I love that they provide a few options to choose from, in case I ever needed to cut sleep short for an early event, or if it’s like the weekend and I want to sleep in and pay back on sleep debt. I usually go for the 3rd option of 7.5h of sleep.

And since doing this consistently, my wake times have varied pretty widely, around ±1h. Sometimes I wake during the earlier part of 5:00AM, sometimes close to 6:00AM. Whereas in the past it was my sleep time that varied and my wake time was fixed.

But here’s the interesting, counterintuitive bit: despite varying wake times, my sleep scores had been consistent in the 80% range (compared to 70% range in the previous routine). Something I could never achieve in the past.

The trade-off? I sacrifice around 1h of my early morning deep work time. Hopefully, a worthwhile trade.

So, my tiny epiphany from this:

They say sleep and wake at same time every day.
I say, sleep enough complete sleep cycles every day.

At least for me.