Time in bed is not asleep | Daily #226

The past few days, I haven’t been sleeping well again. The reason is the ‘sudden’ sleeping schedule changes that happened. When I was on holiday, I slept from 00:00 to 10:00 most of the time. Now back to work I’m in bed between 23:00 and 08:00, and I need time to adjust again.

Due to this, my I’ve been lacking sleep which impacts both my physical- and mental health. I’ve noticed that my fitness degraded immediately. From running 3k-4k pretty moderately, I’m now struggling to do even 2k.

Samen to my mental. I’ve been more moody and emotional than usual. The slightest annoyances get into my head more easily and for a longer time. Also, I feel tired again during the late afternoon.

But what I’ve realized thanks to this (and also the Oura Ring) is that time in bed rarely indicates your sleep quality. Most of us probably, don’t have a sleep efficiency of 100%. This means if you are 8 hours in bed, you probably are not actually the full 8 hours asleep.

On the contrary, your efficiency is probably around 75%. This means 8 hours in bed, is probably roughly 6 hours actually asleep. This means for most people barely enough actual sleep. That’s me right now.

On a good night between 23:00 and 08:00, I may get between 7-8 hours of sleep. But this means on average I get between 6-7 hours of sleep which is not enough and impacts my day-to-day life.

I’m going to try to sleep earlier as much as possible and on the weekends, lay in bed for 10 hours to compensate.

Remember that the duration in bed is not equal to the duration of your sleep.