Quick poll

[conuly]

Poll #21515 Sleep

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 94

View Respondents

What is your honest, normal bedtime?

View Answers

12 midnight - 12:30 am
6 (6.7%)

12:30 - 1 am
7 (7.9%)

1 - 1:30 am
3 (3.4%)

1:30 - 2 am
5 (5.6%)

2 - 2:30 am
2 (2.2%)

2:30 - 3 am
0 (0.0%)

3 - 3:30 am
0 (0.0%)

3:30 - 4 am
2 (2.2%)

4 - 4:30 am
0 (0.0%)

4:30 - 5 am
1 (1.1%)

5 - 5:30 am
0 (0.0%)

5:30 - 6 am
0 (0.0%)

6 - 6:30 am
1 (1.1%)

6:30 - 7 am
1 (1.1%)

7 - 7:30 am
0 (0.0%)

7:30 - 8 am
0 (0.0%)

8 - 8:30 am
0 (0.0%)

8:30 - 9 am
0 (0.0%)

9 - 9:30 am
1 (1.1%)

9:30 - 10 am
0 (0.0%)

10 - 10:30 am
1 (1.1%)

10:30 - 11 am
1 (1.1%)

11 - 11:30 am
2 (2.2%)

11:30 - 12 noon
0 (0.0%)

12 - 12:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

12:30 - 1 pm
0 (0.0%)

1 - 1:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

1:30 - 2 pm
0 (0.0%)

2 - 2:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

2:30 - 3 pm
0 (0.0%)

3 - 3:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

3:30 - 4:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

4:30 - 5 pm
0 (0.0%)

5 - 5:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

5:30 - 6 pm
0 (0.0%)

6 - 6:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

6:30 - 7 pm
1 (1.1%)

7 - 7:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

7:30 - 8 pm
1 (1.1%)

8 - 8:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

8:30 - 9 pm
3 (3.4%)

9 - 9:30 pm
7 (7.9%)

9:30 - 10 pm
7 (7.9%)

10 - 10:30 pm
10 (11.2%)

10:30 - 11 pm
8 (9.0%)

11 - 11:30 pm
11 (12.4%)

11:30 - 12 midnight
8 (9.0%)

What is your honest, normal wake time?

View Answers

12 midnight - 12:30 am
0 (0.0%)

12:30 - 1 am
0 (0.0%)

1 - 1:30 am
0 (0.0%)

1:30 - 2 am
0 (0.0%)

2 - 2:30 am
0 (0.0%)

2:30 - 3 am
0 (0.0%)

3 - 3:30 am
0 (0.0%)

3:30 - 4 am
1 (1.1%)

4 - 4:30 am
0 (0.0%)

4:30 - 5 am
4 (4.4%)

5 - 5:30 am
5 (5.6%)

5:30 - 6 am
7 (7.8%)

6 - 6:30 am
15 (16.7%)

6:30 - 7 am
12 (13.3%)

7 - 7:30 am
14 (15.6%)

7:30 - 8 am
4 (4.4%)

8 - 8:30 am
7 (7.8%)

8:30 - 9 am
3 (3.3%)

9 - 9:30 am
4 (4.4%)

9:30 - 10 am
5 (5.6%)

10 - 10:30 am
0 (0.0%)

10:30 - 11 am
2 (2.2%)

11 - 11:30 am
1 (1.1%)

11:30 - 12 noon
0 (0.0%)

12 - 12:30 pm
1 (1.1%)

12:30 - 1 pm
0 (0.0%)

1 - 1:30 pm
1 (1.1%)

1:30 - 2 pm
0 (0.0%)

2 - 2:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

2:30 - 3 pm
0 (0.0%)

3 - 3:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

3:30 - 4:30 pm
1 (1.1%)

4:30 - 5 pm
1 (1.1%)

5 - 5:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

5:30 - 6 pm
0 (0.0%)

6 - 6:30 pm
1 (1.1%)

6:30 - 7 pm
0 (0.0%)

7 - 7:30 pm
1 (1.1%)

7:30 - 8 pm
0 (0.0%)

8 - 8:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

8:30 - 9 pm
0 (0.0%)

9 - 9:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

9:30 - 10 pm
0 (0.0%)

10 - 10:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

10:30 - 11 pm
0 (0.0%)

11 - 11:30 pm
0 (0.0%)

11:30 - 12 midnight
0 (0.0%)

How many hours of sleep do you get every night, rounded up?

View Answers
Mean: 7.44 Median: 7 Std. Dev 1.11

0		0 (0.0%)
1		0 (0.0%)
2		0 (0.0%)
3		0 (0.0%)
4		1 (1.1%)
5		1 (1.1%)
6		12 (13.2%)
7		39 (42.9%)
8		24 (26.4%)
9		9 (9.9%)
10		5 (5.5%)
11		0 (0.0%)
12		0 (0.0%)
13		0 (0.0%)
14		0 (0.0%)
15		0 (0.0%)
16		0 (0.0%)

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I know there's about ten hours between when I like to go to bed and when I wake up and I said I only sleep about six hours, but I have brutal insomnia.

[conuly]

That sucks :(

[notasupervillain]

My husband has to wake up at 6am for work. And our wedded bliss requires that I don't sleep while he's prepping for work.

It's hell.

[chelseagirl]

Take that and make it 4am. Actually, my partner wakes up at 3, but I'm "allowed" to doze until 4, at which point the cats charge me. I'm exhausted all the time, but my fragile darling needs me to be part of their morning routine. And also once there's light and movement, I'm awake. (We live in an apartment, so can't really avoid that.) *sigh*

[notasupervillain]

Ugh

We bought an automatic cat feeder. My husband calls it the best marital aid we've ever bought. A world where cats don't associate us with their morning food is a good world.

They still occasionally wake me up purely because they can. But they are cats.

[chelseagirl]

That's a really great idea! Probably too late with ours, however -- I'm imagining it'd take a long time to decondition them.

[notasupervillain]

Ours adapted REALLY FAST.

The trick was that robo-Dad fed them BEFORE regular breakfast time, and initially fed them more than their usual breakfast. So they were full and sleepy at "wake up the humans" time. By the time robo-dad reduced their rations, they were used to the idea that you needed to beg to the robot, not the humans. I've caught them meowing to robo-dad.

[chelseagirl]

I will have to keep that in mind!

[monanotlisa]

Smart!

Can't do this for outdoor cats, and my wife is a sentimental one who loves cooing over our little monsters being hungry and begging her. ;) But, smart.

[conuly]

If the outdoor cats are microchipped and you're willing to spend a mint on fancy feeders that only open for the correct microchip....

[notasupervillain]

I like the cats begging when I get home, so that's when they get their wetfood.

But we have indoor cats, and I always worry they'll get out when I'm coming home ... so the food is a way to be certain they're not thinking about leaving when I open the door!

[bibliofile]

I love that the cats meow to robo-dad. (And not just that it's proving that cats try and try, even if you never give in.)

[notasupervillain]

They've never given up hope of convincing robo-dad. I've even seen them rub against the food dispenser.

[gaffsie]

My goal is the get into bed a little earlier than that, but I've been slipping lately. I do best when I get a solid 8 hours of sleep.

[conuly]

There's just so much to do....

[agoodwinsmith]

I have a broader range of bedtimes than half an hour, but they are always after midnight. Also broader range of waking up times, although now I get up specifically at 9:00 am for a pill, and then may or may not go back to bed for more sleep.

I'm retired, so my own boss for time, but when I worked, I *could NOT* fall asleep before midnight, no matter how much voodoo and sleep hygiene I practiced. Always sleep deprived.

[gingicat]

My “normal” time is when I wake up without an alarm clock.

My meds schedule ensures that I’m asleep by 9:30, even if I haven’t gone to bed.

[highlyeccentric]

I function better if bedtime is closer to 9 than to 10, but I haven't been successful at enforcing that.

[kengr]

I don't *have* a normal bedtime, nor a "normal time to get up. They very so much that on one day I may be getting up before the time I went to sleep on another day.

Also, I take long naps at various times.

So I kinda break your poll.

[bibliofile]

Yeah, me too. Needed an option for "sleep varies and is weird" or something.

[conuly]

I considered it, but that's generally considered to be rare even among people with non-typical sleep patterns/sleep disorders.

Then again, circadian rhythm disorders are more common among autistics and I do have a self-selected group of friends so....

[antisoppist]

I answered for the half of the week when the kids are with me. I have an insomniac teenager and a late body-clock 11 year-old. I read to the 11 year-old and it is usually 10.30 by the time she has finished telling me things, and then there is time when it is just me and the 17 year-old and that is when she tells me things so it is often getting on for midnight by the time I get to bed. If you've got teenagers willing to tell you things, I think you need to roll with when that happens.

There is no point me trying to enforce earlier sleep habits (have tried, including GP for eldest) because they would just go to bed and be bored or read until midnight anyway. I then have to get up at 6.30 to make sure she has got up for her bus.

I also have a 14 year-old who takes himself off to bed at 10 and is up at 7 cooking bacon sandwiches so it is natural wiring I feel. It's just I'd rather be keeping his hours!

When I am on my own the rest of the week (am self-employed) I go to bed at 10 and wake up about 7 so ideally I seem to want 9 hours. I suppose at least I get that half the time.

[monanotlisa]

That makes so much sense, but you are genuinely unlucky to have kids with different "brain clocks".

In my family, both kids ended up inheriting our fathers' brain clock, making us night owls who'd go to bed late and get up late. Frustrating for our early-riser mom, but at least consistent...

[sabotabby]

I wake up a gazillion times during the night, though, so 7 isn't actually enough.

[hudebnik]

I'd prefer to go to bed an hour or two earlier, and get up slightly earlier. shalmestere would prefer to get up an hour or two later, and go to bed slightly later. Neither of us gets "enough" sleep.

Podcast

[stormsong]

Ologies had a really good podcast recently about sleep science: Somnology.

[melannen]

I have a work schedule where I work 3 1-9pm shifts and 2 9-5 shifts and usually at least one day off with an early obligation. I've found that I tend to wake up around 8:30 (which is panic, run time for the early shift) even on the late days, but then I go back to sleep for awhile. so I stuck in what I tend to hover around, even though it's earlier on early days and I do sometimes dridt late on late ones.

I think overall it's actually been good though, I'm keeping my most regular hours ever. I think it's a combo of being less tempted to sleep in as late as I can when I know I don't have an alarm tomorrow either, and that I think a lot of my tendency to stay up too late has always been dread of my obligations first thing the next morning. But the 2-4 early days keep it from drifting too far.

[melannen]

Also: I probably would have estimated my sleep as less a couple years ago, because it always feels like I lay in bed for hours, but I've started going to sleep on podcasts on a sleep timer, and even if I know FOR A FACT that I couldn't get to sleep until well after the podcast went off, I can almost never remember listening to more than 10-15 minutes of it when I go back the next night. So I probably usually overestimate my awake time and underestimate my sleep time if I don't have a benchmark.

[conuly]

Consciousness is weird - maybe you're semi-asleep for part of it/

[brokenallbroken]

By "normal", do you mean when left to my own devices, or do you mean the routine work forces me into?

[darkoshi]

I'm wondering this too. Although in either case my to-bed time still varies quite a bit, and my non-work rise time does too.

[wolby]

I have no idea how to answer because I've been trying to get up for good when the cat demands breakfast for the past few weeks, which means I *actually* get up between 6 and 7 instead of my usual 8:30-10! I normally can't make myself get in bed until after midnight, but I'm usually somewhere between 11:30pm on a good night, 1:30-2 on an average one, and 4 or 5am on a bad one. (Not insomniac, just bored by sleeping. :/)

[isis]

My sleep cycle varies with the seasons, because I naturally wake when it gets light out - after 7:30 in the winter, before 6 in the summer. My husband is unwilling to go to bed before 10pm (and I can't fall asleep if he's not there and I know he'll be coming in later) so I get less sleep in the summer than I do in the winter, which sometimes I make up with naps. I'm a morning person so I feel best when I get up after naturally waking, and anyway in the summer I want to get my run in before it gets too warm, so I have no problem with that.

I have a flexible job so I don't have to wake at any specific time. Also, reading the other replies, I am grateful for a cat who is indifferent to food and so doesn't wake me in the mornings! She definitely gets impatient for her humans to stop being asleep and therefore boring, but we trained her well by throwing pillows at her, so now she just vultures on the bureau until she spots me starting to get up, at which point she figures I'm fair game and jumps onto the bed to encourage me.

(Also, thank you for giving me the excuse to trot out this icon, which I haven't used in ages!)

[larryhammer]

The only hard number in my answers is the alarm at 6am. My target for getting to sleep is 9:30, but between Things To Get Done and my own insomnia that rarely happens these days. 7 hours of sleep is a good night, between my own wake-ups and when the kid wakes up and comes into our bed.

[redsixwing]

My answers don't math, but that's because I don't sleep easily. When I do, I sleep light and wake up a lot.

and then i can't go past 7:30 (︢⓪ ᴗ ︢⓪✿)

[thewayne]

My go to bed and get up times vary wildly depending on whether I'm working at the library the next day and whether or not my wife is at home. If she's not working, then I'm up later and we're doing stuff, either watching TV or a movie or playing LOTRO.

If I'm not waking up to an alarm, I sleep right at 7.5 hours and wake up on my own.

[bladespark]

I don't think I can take this, because while I do have a rough "bed about midnight, wake about nine" schedule, the highly irregular interjections of "except then the toddler took a late nap so we both went down at one" or "for some reason she decided that 5 am was a good wake up time" or "up at three am because I don't even know, back to bed about seven" and so on makes the amount of sleep I get so wildly irregular I can't possibly make any kind of estimate. Not enough, certainly.

[maju]

I need to keep very consistent going to bed/waking up times or I have a lot of trouble falling asleep. I can adjust those times forward or backward to a certain extent (within about an hour each way I guess) if necessary, for example when I travel to a different time zone, but I seem to need to be in bed for 8 hours to get enough sleep.

[musesfool]

I've been waking up for so long for work between 7:30 and 7:45 am that even on weekends without an alarm I usually wake up then as well (though I usually go back to sleep until 8:30 on weekends). I also take a long time to fall asleep and sometimes don't stay asleep, so what appears to be 8 hours is probably more like 6.5 - 7 most of the time.

[shadowkat]

Admittedly it varies...I get between 6-7 hours each night, sometimes 5. I am a long-time sufferer of insomina, and a night-owl, who has an 8-4pm work shift, and an hour and twenty minute commute.

[unearthlymarmot]

No matter when I go to bed -- which is usually around 10, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes later -- I always wake up around 7. My body seems to have programmed itself that way.

[fred_mouse]

I've averaged my get up time, because kid training schedules muck with it. I'm frequently in bed for 8 hours, but rarely get more than 7 (except Sundays, when I usually get to catch up some)

[pauamma]

Answered assuming by "wake up time" you meant my target get-up time in my local timezone. (I'm a lightish sleeper and it's a rare day when I'm not waken up untimely by outside noises.)

[archangelbeth]

If it were up to me, I would sleep from around 2am to 10am, but the Offspring has insomnia and needs company, and... well, the answers I gave. Right now, that 7 is aspirational.

[conuly]

See this short comment thread: https://conuly.dreamwidth.org/2825725.html?thread=28410109#cmt28410109

[cellio]

Normal-imposed or normal-preferred? I'd *rather* go to be around 1AM and get up around 9:30-10AM, but that only actually works on Saturday night/Sunday morning or holidays. The rest of the time, I go to bed around midnight and get up around 7:30-8 (usually with one middle-of-the-night bathroom run).

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

What is your honest, normal bedtime?
I don't have one. It's whenever I'm ready to go to bed: usually but not always after sunset and before dawn.

What is your honest, normal wake time?
Don't have one. Usually but not always between about 4:00 AM and 1:00 PM.

How many hours of sleep do you get every night, rounded up?
I could calculate that number, because I track my sleep/wake cycles, but the answer would be meaningless, because sleep is not cumulative. On any particular night, I may get from zero to nine hours of sleep. It all depends on when/whether I go to bed, how soon I go to sleep once I'm there, and how soon I get woken up.

I don't believe that 'averaging' questions about lifestyle reflect reality in most cases, even for people with a more regular life than mine. Unless people actually write it all down every day (as I do) they're just guessing about their diet, exercise, sleep, chores and spending, and the 'guesstimates' are generally heavily biased with wishful thinking.