You'll soon find yourself feeling naturally tired and ready to lay your head on a pillow at a more stagnant time each night. It'll take time before your body gets accustomed to your new wake-up routine. Wu, a Vanderbilt sleep expert who has been troubleshooting sleep routines for many years, says it's important to have a general bedtime at first, but not to force a bedtime if it doesn't feel natural - just focus on getting up at your desired hour. 'Put away work and school and homework and just let yourself sort-of wind down in the evening in advance of your newly established bedtime, and then your body will tell you when you get sleepy.' The bottom line:Ĭalculating your own individual window for heading to bed is important, but you should only do so after you've settled on a routine wake-up time during the week (and one that you can loosely stick to on the weekends). But let yourself have the opportunities to feel sleepy, right?' Wu says, adding that you should actively unplug from television, video games, or your phone, and turn to other things like reading (or even simply closing your eyes!).

'After you've established that routine, it becomes simple: Go to bed when you feel sleepy. Over time, your body will dictate when you feel sleepy and ready for bed if you continue to wake up at 7 a.m., especially if you are working on sleep hygiene ( like using these apps!).

so that you may get closer to 9 hours if you need it. You'll need to fall asleep no later than 1 a.m., but should give yourself the opportunity to get in bed by 10 p.m. Let's say you're a 30-year-old currently working from home, but enjoy to workout before the day begins, and you're dead set to get out of bed by 7 a.m. Use the below chart to help establish when you should get into bed: 'The more consistent you are, the more easily your brain will catch up on this pattern and be able to tell you when you should go to bed.' When is the best time to sleep?Īfter you've settled on your ideal wake-up time, it's time to start establishing a habit of heading to bed at a time when you'll be able to get enough sleep, per recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation. Determining when you need to be awake and working through a morning routine, then, is important to establish a bedtime, and your body will adjust over time. A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital suggests that a consistent wake-up time, with the same amount of sleep per night, led to more productivity in student's lives. Keeping your wake-up time consistent - and then using it to formulate your ideal bedtime - may be better than going to sleep every night at the same time with various wake-up calls. Wu says, as it can help you skip grogginess on weekdays. What about weekends, you might ask? Sticking to an hour or so within your usual wake-up time on weekends is best, Dr. Think of it this way: Rather than strive for the same bedtime every night, you should focus on waking up every morning around the same time if at all possible. If you only need seven, but you're trying to sleep nine hours, it's going to actually backfire and you'll get frustrated… which, ironically, will decrease your sleep quality, making your sleep worse compared to as if you just tried to get seven hours of sleep.'īelieve it or not, the real key to understanding the perfect time to get into bed is more aligned with what time you need to be up in the morning. 'You won't automatically have better sleep if you aim for 10 hours every night, that's not how it works. But the perfect amount of sleep isn't always at the top of this range, explains Jade Wu, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. Currently, experts at the National Sleep Foundation suggest that adults sleep between seven and nine hours each night, but that the acceptable range can extend towards 10 hours and as few as six hours on a daily basis. The best time to go to sleep is more closely aligned with how much sleep your body is enjoying every night. Despite all the advice we have available for getting to sleep faster or improving sleep hygiene, the answer isn't the same for everyone.

Natural wake up time