[Ensorceled]

I've been using "Sleep Cycle" since 2014 and learned a ton about myself in the process.

Most importantly, I learned that I need almost 8 hours sleep to feel my best and that I'm just subpar on the days when I don't get that much. Less ability to focus, less emotional control, less desire to exercise, less ability to resist temptation. Less happiness.

For me, it's optimal if I set the sleep cycle alarm for 8 hours and 15 minutes from time I lay down. If that all works out, I'm set up for a much more productive and happier day.

[orev]

Sleep Cycle is amazing, and I also had a watch in the 00s that did the same thing. The concept of the alarm timing with your cycle is so revolutionary that I’m really surprised it has not caught on anywhere else. It should be a fundamental feature of all smart watches, but it’s nowhere to be seen. I don’t really care to just track sleep if such tracking does nothing but let you see some pretty charts.

[closeparen]

Most people need to be somewhere at a specific time in the morning; a variable alarm clock doesn’t make much sense unless they also leave a huge buffer. But for childless tech workers who can roll into the office any time before 11am standup... absolutely.

[orev]

A 30 minute window really isn’t that big of a deal. You just set the end time to when you need to be up, and then if it goes off before that, then you wake up refreshed with a little extra time. Your choice is really whether you want to get up refreshed, possibly a little early, or wake up abruptly in the wrong cycle and be groggy all morning. Either way, the solution to getting more sleep is to go to bed earlier if you have a fixed time to wake up.

[weavie]

My pebble has this feature.

[criddell]

I tracked my sleep using a FitBit for two years and I don't think I learned anything.

How did you measure happiness and productivity and how did you correlate that to your sleep?

[Ensorceled]

I was also using rescuetime and MyFitnessPal, which tracked my fitness and productivity.

The happiness thing was more abstract... why am I unhappy? Because I’m not exercising, eating well and I’m working too many hours. Why am I doing those things? Hmmm, it’s correlated with, amongst other things stress and lack of sleep.

Fixing the sleep helped fix the rest.