A short obsession with sleep and what I learned from it ✍️

24 Aug, 2025

Last year, I already mentioned that sleep is my superpower and now, more than ever, I'm convinced of that.

When I feel rested, I can take on everything.
When I'm not, I have difficulty with a lot of things.

For the past few weeks, I felt rested and my mind was clear. I felt focused and on top of everything. This continued until after the previous weekend, when we had a wedding and, obviously went to bed late. The day after, Marge got a cold. She had trouble sleeping with a lot of coughing so my sleep took a beating as well.

So with these 2 bad nights, I felt tired and unproductive. I tried recovering with going to bed early, but to no avail.

I wear a Garmin 24/7, and use an Apple watch for sleeping (to do a morning breathing session). Both gave me a good sleep score, yet I was feeling the opposite of what my watches were saying.

If my data is ok, then probably something else was going on. This got me in a berserk obsession this week (triggered due to my tiredness) to check what was wrong and how I could fix my sleep again.

Going through a lot of online resources, I must say I learned a lot.

Chronotypes

A chronotype is your body's preference for sleeping and waking. You probably know whether you're a morning or evening type, which is defined by your chronotype.

There are 4 chronotypes, each with their own characteristics and preference for productivity, rest and sleep.

The bear is the most common type, following the cycle of the sun, waking with it and going to bed when it sets. They are the most productive before noon and early evening, and get an energy dip around lunchtime.

The lion is the morning type, being the most productive early day and prefer to go to bed early.

The wolf is the evening type, getting up late and being most productive late afternoon and evening.

Dolphins have trouble sleeping and are often considered insomniacs due to fragmented and light sleep, having the highest energy level around noon.

So depending on your chronotype, you have an ideal time to go to bed.

Circadian rhythm

The circadian rhythm is your body's internal 24-hour clock that regulates your sleep-wake cycle, hormone release, and other bodily functions, synchronizing with the light-dark cycle of the day. One of the things it does is when the sun sets, it starts to generate melatonin, a hormone to make you sleepy.

However, if you mess with your circadian rhythm, like going to be late or use screens before bed, this impacts your sleep. And while you sometimes may think you had enough sleep, it can be of inferior quality.

Finding my ideal bedtime

So by getting an understanding of my chronotype, which is a bear, and knowing I needed to respect my circadian rhythm, I went out, searching for the ideal time to go to bed.

My Garmin watch gives me an idea of the amount of sleep, but not when ideally to go to bed. Similarly, an Apple watch can track sleep, but besides that doesn't offer much advice.

That's when I started looking for other resources. I stumbled on the Youtube channel of Rob ter Horst, calling himself the Quantified Scientist, who tests a lot of devices and rates them according to their abilities, like hear rate and sleep tracking. It almost got me to the point to dig into an Oura ring sleep tracker, but once I saw his review on my Apple watch, I decided to look for cheaper apps that could help me out.

I tried Somno, SleepWatch, Rise and Sleep Cycle, all good or recommended apps. But to be honest, while they may give a sleep quality score, or guess you circadian rhythm, it's still about how you feel when waking in the morning or get through the day that counts.

But, what they can help with is look at consistency, as the more you're consistent with when you go to sleep, the more you're likely in tune with your circadian rhythm. But you don't need apps. If you have an Apple watch, you can even get this from the default health app. With an iPhone only, it becomes more tricky, as Apple removed the "Track Time in Bed" feature in iOS 18. But if you're interested, you could opt for Sleep Cycle which can track sleep with just a phone. Or keep a simple sleep log.

Of course, while going to bed consistently is one thing, it also needs to be at the right time. Missing your melatonin window can als impact the quality of sleep.

Of all the apps I tried, Sleep cycle is the one I kept using as besides all the data it offered, it showed me how long it took to fall asleep, and that is an important metric to understand whether I went to bed at an ideal time. The longer it takes, the more my circadian rhythm is expected to be out of tune.

What I now learned from checking all this and having a regular week at home (working), is that the week before when I had holidays, I negatively impacted my sleep. I stayed up late to write and do other things, sometimes more that 1h after my regular bedtime, and while I did sleep each night for about 8 hours, I never felt rested. And now I know why. I missed my ideal timeframe for bedtime.

At the time of writing this, I also know that I have a mild viral infection, so the cocktail of late bedtime the week before, a wedding and sickness did a lot of harm to my sleep and overall wellbeing.

But I'll keep that in mind, not to mess too much with my sleep schedule, even on holiday. Sleep is my superpower and I need to treat it as such.

Long story short, what I learned

Make sure you get enough quality sleep as it impact your wellbeing.
In order to achieve this level of quality sleep, you don't need fancy devices.
Find your chronotype and learn what's the best sleeping schedule.
Aim for a consistent schedule with going to bed and waking up at the same time.
Check how you feel each day after sleeping 7-8 hours and make small adjustments accordingly.
Once you find your optimal schedule, stick with (as far as possible).

And perhaps most importantly, don't obsess over sleep too much, as that also could have a negative effect on your sleep. The pressure you need to sleep.

Of course, there are many other factors that impact sleep as well. Alcohol, coffee, screens, children, snoozing in the morning, stress, meditation, reading, hot bath, exercise... They all play a role too of when and how good you sleep. Keeping a log of these things alongside a schedule can help as well to find which have the most and best impact.

After learning all this, I kept a fixed schedule of when I went to sleep and when I got up, had a bedtime routine of reading and breathing exercises, and start to feel good again. It wasn't easy, because I wanted to do more, have some me-time. But sometimes compromises have to be made. And this one is worth it and as it will pay off in the long run.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

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#2025 #2025-08 #article #blaugust2025 #blogging