I’ve been tracking the time I spend in bed for more than two years now (starting on June 16, 2014), and have not looked at the data in detail. Time to do that!
First, what do I track exactly? The minute I go to bed I start a timer in an app called aTimeLogger on my Android phone. There is an iPhone version too if you’re interested. The minute I get out of bed I stop the timer. I do NOT track the time I sleep. I usually read for 10-15 minutes before putting the lights out, and I stay in bed for 5-10 minutes after the alarm sounds.
In all that time I skipped only 3 out of 784 days (in this analysis I’ve only included dates up until August 6, 2016 for reasons).
To the numbers: on average I spent 7h 31m per day in bed. That look awesome, doesn’t it? Well it does, but when you look at separate days in the week (people tend to have a somewhat regular schedule, especially when their employer wants them to spend a certain time in the office) the numbers are quite different.
Let’s look at the following table:
| Night | In 2014 | In 2015 | In 2016 | All time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun-Mon | 6h 58m | 7h 0m | 6h 46m | 6h 56m |
| Mon-Tue | 7h 6m | 6h 54m | 6h 47m | 6h 55m |
| Tue-Wed | 7h 13m | 6h 45m | 6h 44m | 6h 52m |
| Wed-Thu | 6h 50m | 6h 47m | 6h 48m | 6h 48m |
| Thu-Fri | 6h 53m | 6h 52m | 6h 48m | 6h 51m |
| Fri-Sat | 8h 49m | 9h 8m | 8h 59m | 9h 1m |
| Sat-Sun | 8h 58m | 9h 20m | 9h 19m | 9h 14 |
| Average | 7h 31m | 7h 32m | 7h 28m | 7h 31m |
As you can see there is quite a difference in the average times for weekdays and weekend days (which is expected as I tend to sleep in in the weekend). I must say however that I don’t recognize the numbers for the weekdays. I’ve always had the feeling I spend a lot less time in bed on weekdays. If I had to guess I would say around 6 hours. The number don’t lie of course, so it must be something else. Mind you, I already said I don’t track my actual time sleeping, which is of course shorter than the averages mentioned here. Maybe this is what is causing this feeling.
Let’s look at some other numbers:
- the shortest time spent in bed was 5h 14m;
- the longest time was 10h 48m;
- the mode (the duration recorded most often) was 6h 27m (17 times, or about 2.2% of all days);
What have I learned from this? Well, first and foremost, I spend a lot more time in bed than I thought I was. Now I need a way to make those hours count, because every morning (especially on weekdays) I feel like I could do with some more sleep…