We get asked a lot, “What should my sleep schedule be? Should I sleep more or less than I already am? How can I structure my life to include healthier, better quality sleep?”
All great questions! We’re going to take the time to answer them, to give you the information you need to know exactly how much sleep you need, how to plan a better sleep schedule, and make sure you’re giving your body the good quality sleep it needs.
Read on to answer “What should be sleep schedule be?” and all the other sleep schedule-related questions you’ve got.
What Should My Sleep Schedule Be? Calculating Your Sleep Needs
There are a wide number of tools available that will help you plan exactly how much sleep you need. For example, you can find sleep calculators that will help you figure out the right amount of sleep recommended for your age range.
However, we’ve got some simple guidelines you can follow when trying to calculate your daily sleep needs.
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Age Range
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Recommended Daily Sleep
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Newborn
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0–3 months
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14–17 hours
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Infant
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4–11 months
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12–15 hours
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Toddler
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1–2 years
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11–14 hours
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Preschool
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3–5 years
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10–13 hours
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School-age
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6–13 years
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9–11 hours
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Teens
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14–17 years
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8–10 hours
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Adults
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18+ years
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7–9 hours
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That’s a pretty clear guideline to follow, right? As an adult, you know your sleep schedule should include AT LEAST seven and NO MORE THAN nine hours of sleep every night.
But you can actually break it down a bit more and dive deeper into your precise sleep schedule.
You see, everyone has their own sleep patterns. Some people slip into the deeper stages of sleep faster, or spend more time in REM sleep. The average sleep cycle (cycling through the lighter, deeper, and REM stages of sleep) are roughly 90 minutes long, but some people have shorter while others have longer cycles.
It’s important that you take the time to analyze your sleep and figure out how much you need based on how tired you feel when you wake up.
For example, maybe you only need 6 ½ hours of sleep to feel rested and wake up refreshed. This could mean that your sleep cycles are a bit shorter than 90 minutes, so that when you wake up at the 6 ½-hour mark, it’s right at the end of the last sleep cycle, just before you slip back into deeper sleep.
In this example, if you tried to sleep for just another half an hour—for a total of 7 hours, as the recommended minimum—you’ll wake up tired and groggy because the alarm interrupted you mid-cycle. You’d have to sleep closer to 8 hours to make sure you wake up at the end of that next sleep cycle.
It’s a good idea to take some time to analyze your sleep habits. Try changing up your patterns and schedules to find the routine that works best for you.
One week, sleep for 7 hours. The next week, sleep for 7 ½ hours. The next, sleep for 8 hours, and so on. Keep experimenting, and pay attention to how you feel when you wake up. You’ll notice that when you hit the right sleep duration, you’ll wake up at the end of your last sleep cycle feeling much more alert and refreshed than if you interrupted your sleep mid-cycle. That will tell you how much sleep you need each night!
Note: Your sleep needs will change as you age. You’ll find that you need less sleep over time, and your sleep cycle may shorten or lengthen. Be willing to adapt your sleep schedule according to your changing needs.
What Should My Sleep Schedule Be? Planning Your Daily Routines
Once you know how many hours of sleep you need, that’s when it’s time to plan your daily routines around fitting that chunk of sleep into your life.
Maybe you’ve already got plenty of time set aside for a full night of rest. Say you’ve been trying to get a full nine hours of sleep, but discover you really only need eight. That means you’ve got plenty of time to adapt your evening and morning activities around your sleep schedule.
But what if you’ve only been setting aside 7 hours for sleep and you need 8 hours for optimum results? That’s when it’s time to examine your morning and evening activities to see how you can shift things to sleep more.
Your sleep schedule should always include not only time spent in the sleep cycles, but also 15 minutes to fall asleep and 10-15 minutes to wake up. You can plan to fall asleep at the same time every night, but just make sure you’re relaxing and in bed with time enough for your body to shut down and drift off into sleep.
And remember, your sleep needs will change from day to day, depending on factors like health, stress, exercise, even diet. Be prepared to adapt to your body’s demands—sleep more if you feel you need it, get to bed earlier if you’re feeling tired, or wake up earlier if you’ve reached the end of your sleep cycle.
Lock in a Healthy Sleep Schedule with PureSleep
If you’re trying to set sleep routines and patterns to encourage healthy sleep, you’ll find that PureSleep can be an excellent helping hand.
PureSleep is a natural sleep formula made using organic ingredients that will not only help you fall asleep faster, but cycle through the various stages of sleep and spend more time in deep sleep. Thanks to PureSleep, you can repair your sleep habits and get your sleep routines locked in. You’ll sleep better, longer, and wake up feeling more refreshed every day!
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