This sleep cycle calculator is both a bedtime and wake up tool that can help you keep track of your sleeping hours. You can read more on the importance of having flexible sleeping hours below the form.
How does the sleep cycle calculator work?
This is a dual sleep tool that you can use to either decide when to fall asleep to wake up at a certain hour or as a wake up calculator because it can estimate when you should set up your alarm if you go to sleep now or at a certain hour.
This is a flexible sleep calculator because let’s you set up an average time to fall asleep according to your sleep cycle. You just have to decide if you want to calculate bedtime or wake up time, then input the data.
It is important to say that a proper time to go to sleep and a proper time to sleep is a critical lifestyle part that has a direct impact on your overall health and well being.
The bedtime calculation estimates when you should fall asleep if you want to wake up at a certain hour. In this tab you are asked to provide:
■ Desired wake up time: mandatory field, where you can input the time to wake up. Select from the drop down list the desired hour to wake up, desired minute to wake up and the AM/PM depending on your local time and hour.
■ Average time to fall asleep: optional field, where you can take into account a customized time you need to fall asleep in minutes. If this field is left blank an average of 15 minutes time to fall asleep is assumed.
■ Desired time to sleep: optional field, where you can consider how much time you would like to sleep in hours. If this field is left blank an average of 8 hours to sleep is assumed.
Example: I want to wake up at 7:30am and I really need to sleep for 8 hours and a half and it takes me about 10 minutes to fall asleep. This means that I should go to bed at 10:50pm.
The wake up calculation determines when you should wake up if you go to sleep now or at a certain hour. In this tab you will find 3 fields (first is mandatory, the other 2 are optional) to fill in data, as presented below:
■ Bedtime: mandatory field, where you can specify the time you are about to go to bed. The bedtime is default filled in to your current time. However, you can change from the drop down list the desired hour to go to sleep, the desired bedtime minute and the AM/PM depending on your local time.
■ Average time to fall asleep: optional field, where you can select a customized time you need to fall asleep in minutes. If this field is left blank an average of 15 minutes time to fall asleep is assumed.
■ Desired time to sleep: optional field, where you can enter how much time you would like to sleep in hours. If this field is left blank an average of 8 hours to sleep is assumed.
Example: I want to sleep for 9 hours and 30 minutes, it takes me 10 minutes to fall asleep and I am planning to go to sleep at 11:15pm. When should I put my alarm clock? The answer is 8:55am.
How much sleep do you really need?
1. As released by National Sleep Foundation, the time we need to sleep and rest appropriately depends on the age group as presented within the table provided below:
| Age | Sleep Needs |
| Newborns (0 - 2 months) | 12 - 18 hours |
| Infants (3 - 11 months) | 14 - 15 hours |
| Toddlers (1 - 3 years) | 12 - 14 hours |
| Preschoolers (3 - 5 years) | 11 - 13 hours |
| School-age children (5 - 10 years) | 10 - 11 hours |
| Teens (10 - 17 years) | 8.5 - 9.25 hours |
| Adults (18 years or more) | 7 - 9 hours |
Table source: National Sleep Foundation
2. The average falling asleep time is somewhere between 7 – 14 minutes and may vary from one day to another due to different contextual sleeping conditions and/or different factors encountered during the day before sleep time. It is however said that all that is lower than 5 minutes could suggest sleep deprivation.
3. Some research has found that women need an extra hour of sleep compared to men of a similar age.
4. More than seventeen hours of wakefulness can be translated into the same lack of performance as a blood alcohol level of 0.05%.
References
1) Hirshkowitz M, Whiton K et al. (2015) National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation
2) Saper CB, Scammell TE, Lu J (2005) Hypothalamic regulation of sleep and circadian rhythms. Nature 437 (7063): 1257–63
19 Apr, 2014