While not directly a response to the question as asked, I agree with many of the other contributors that sleep tracking is valuable as part of an overall sleep strategy.
I use a FitBit Ionic to track my own sleep and feel that it is quite accurate, at least as far as sleep/wake times go. I can’t really assess sleep stage accuracy, but I’ve found that’s of less value than simply tracking sleep/wake/duration. After a year of not trying to be that disciplined, I recently started paying more attention again to sleep tracking and my sleep behavior in general.
What always strikes me when I look at my sleep data after a few months of not looking at it is that my subjective sense of my sleep behavior is just way off. I’ll think that I’ve been going to sleep 11-12pm each night with occasional nights of staying up to 1-2am, but then the data says 1-2am is the norm. Similarly I’ll think that most nights I’m getting enough sleep the for data to tell me that’s the minority.
Related to the importance of a consistent routine and well entrained circadian rhythm, I’m now focusing more on sleep time and wake time than whether I successfully slept enough hours or how many times I wake up in the night (a struggle for me). The time I got to sleep is especially an input I much more directly control than the output of whether it was a good night’s sleep. It seems good to focus directly on the thing I can control, separately checking whether it is having the desired flow-on effects.
Fitbit’s out of the box sleep dashboard is pretty nice, but doesn’t make the data I most care about immediately apparent. It’s got one graph which shows sleep and wake times over the course of the past week, but I feel it’s not quite enough as a feedback loop on my behavior. As a solution to that, I recently set up my own report derived from the data to be emailed to me each day. (I did something similar in 2016 except with an online dashboard. The dashboard had the disadvantage that after a few months when I got busy and distracted I stopped checking it. Since I check email daily, I’m hoping I’ll be far less likely to stop looking at my new report.)
First graph: each bar is a night of sleep going from time of sleep to wake time. Green is asleep, red are periods when I was awake.
Second graph: plots deviation from desired sleep and wake times (both later and earlier). Dark red is for bed time error, transparent red for wake time error.
Third graph: time asleep in bed (blue) + time awake in bed (red) = overall time in bed.
My sleep is not quite as consistent as I’d like yet, but a 5x improvement of previous months. I do allow myself exceptions for social events and other unusual circumstances; for now I’m focused on avoiding those nights when it just wasn’t worth it to stay up late and I’m pointlessly sacrificing tomorrow in particular and my overall sleep hygiene in general.
While not directly a response to the question as asked, I agree with many of the other contributors that sleep tracking is valuable as part of an overall sleep strategy.
I use a FitBit Ionic to track my own sleep and feel that it is quite accurate, at least as far as sleep/wake times go. I can’t really assess sleep stage accuracy, but I’ve found that’s of less value than simply tracking sleep/wake/duration. After a year of not trying to be that disciplined, I recently started paying more attention again to sleep tracking and my sleep behavior in general.
What always strikes me when I look at my sleep data after a few months of not looking at it is that my subjective sense of my sleep behavior is just way off. I’ll think that I’ve been going to sleep 11-12pm each night with occasional nights of staying up to 1-2am, but then the data says 1-2am is the norm. Similarly I’ll think that most nights I’m getting enough sleep the for data to tell me that’s the minority.
Related to the importance of a consistent routine and well entrained circadian rhythm, I’m now focusing more on sleep time and wake time than whether I successfully slept enough hours or how many times I wake up in the night (a struggle for me). The time I got to sleep is especially an input I much more directly control than the output of whether it was a good night’s sleep. It seems good to focus directly on the thing I can control, separately checking whether it is having the desired flow-on effects.
Fitbit’s out of the box sleep dashboard is pretty nice, but doesn’t make the data I most care about immediately apparent. It’s got one graph which shows sleep and wake times over the course of the past week, but I feel it’s not quite enough as a feedback loop on my behavior. As a solution to that, I recently set up my own report derived from the data to be emailed to me each day. (I did something similar in 2016 except with an online dashboard. The dashboard had the disadvantage that after a few months when I got busy and distracted I stopped checking it. Since I check email daily, I’m hoping I’ll be far less likely to stop looking at my new report.)
. . .
You can see a sample of my sleep report here.
First graph: each bar is a night of sleep going from time of sleep to wake time. Green is asleep, red are periods when I was awake.
Second graph: plots deviation from desired sleep and wake times (both later and earlier). Dark red is for bed time error, transparent red for wake time error.
Third graph: time asleep in bed (blue) + time awake in bed (red) = overall time in bed.
My sleep is not quite as consistent as I’d like yet, but a 5x improvement of previous months. I do allow myself exceptions for social events and other unusual circumstances; for now I’m focused on avoiding those nights when it just wasn’t worth it to stay up late and I’m pointlessly sacrificing tomorrow in particular and my overall sleep hygiene in general.