Quick Links
Summary
How do you fix a terrible sleep schedule? As someone who spent a lot of my high school and college years as a night owl, I had to fix that when I started working. Luckily, I stumbled upon the Sleep as Android app, and it changed how I approach my sleeping and waking hours. Here’s how it fixed my sleep schedule.
Most people have heard of their “circadian rhythm” but don’t fully understand how it affects sleeping, waking, and alertness. When I was going down the rabbit hole of sleep research, I realized I’d need an app to track my sleep and help me with my alarm settings. I could fix a lot of my daily schedule withto-do list apps, but I’d need something unique for sleep-tracking. I foundSleep as Androidas a great way to keep my sleep and wake cycles as efficient as possible.
What is Sleep as Android?
The Sleep as Android app helped me, personally, with my sleep schedule because of a handful of features that it offers. Among the useful features I still use include:
Some of the features are only accessible to devices that have motion sensors or gyroscopes. The app has challenges that users can undertake to improve their sleep quality, duration, and restfulness over the course of a month. It also tracks the average amount of sleep you’ve gotten over time and interfaces with peripherals connected to your phone. If you don’t have peripherals to link together, it uses your phone’s gyroscope and motion sensors to estimate movement. There are other features I don’t use (but you might find interesting), including:
And a lot more. However, Sleep as Android does require some setup to get used to it. Here’s how I started using it and adapting it to my own needs.
My Experience With Sleep as Android
When I started with Sleep as Android, my sleep schedule was a complete mess (probably because I didn’tlimit my screen time properly). Immediately, I figured I’d need to set some solid goals in place to see if using this app would really help me. As such, over the course of a month, this is what I wanted:
My research told me that I had to work out how much “good” sleep I was getting at night, so I decided to use the app to track my results.
Fast-forward to a month later, and I had a baseline of data which included:
These baseline readings were enough to help me figure out what I needed to do to get better sleep. The app had a handy goal setting that allowed me to increase my sleep time incrementally. After using it for another month, I had managed to raise my sleep levels to acceptable. That wasn’t all I wanted to do, however.
In my sleep research, I found out that humans don’t usually sleep in a single block. In the past,humans would sleep in two shifts. Biphasic sleep was what I wanted to work out, but that required learning about circadian rhythms.
Circadian rhythmsare complicated things, and understanding them helps to work out how to make your biphasic sleeping more efficient. For one thing, your circadian rhythm determines when you’re in a light, deep, and REM sleep phases. Figuring out the rhythm allows you to set a nap timer that brings you out of a nap when you’re at the end of your deep sleep phase before another REM phase starts, making you feel refreshed and ensuring you’re not groggy after waking up.
Your ideal nap time would fall somewherebetween 30 minutes and an hour, corresponding with the stages of a sleep cycle. Working that out allowed me to change my sleeping from monophasically to biphasically without affecting the quality of my sleep. Now, I sleep biphasically and have twice as much energy.
What Helped Me Achieve Sleep Solvency
The app might be overwhelming for users who are just trying to figure it out, but I’ll offer some guidelines as to what are the most important tools for fixing a terrible sleep schedule:
Elements like the smart alarm and oversleep protection are useful tools for beginners who have a demonstrated need for them. If you don’t need them, don’t use them. One of the best things about Sleep as Android is how customizable it is.
Results After 8 Years of Using the App
Since using the app, I’ve changed how I sleep in a few ways:
I’ve switched phones several times since then and never had a problemtransferring the app to a new phone. The app has a trial version, but the paid version is well worth the price tag. The app’s developers are also very responsive to comments left on the store page. As far as my sleep goes, it’s the most influential app I’ve ever seen for fixing a terrible sleep schedule.
