This is one of the most important steps and one which is so easily overlooked or avoided!
If we think the majority of people need 7-8 hours sleep, setting a bedtime is an easy case of arithmetic.
What time does your client need to get up in the morning? This is usually a fairly set time if your client works and/or has children.
If they don’t work, have a flexible work schedule or don’t have children then we need to establish a time they wish to wake up in the morning. This can be harder to enforce if people want to enjoy a lie-in if they haven’t slept well and think it doesn’t matter as they can catch up on the lack of sleep by not getting up. Please refer to the section on ‘Sleep Debt’. This does, however, create a knock-on effect where it then gets difficult to create a pattern of sleep. Please refer back to ‘The Circadian Rhythm’ and also ‘Chronotypes’ to establish the importance of a regular sleep pattern. Then together set a goal of a morning wake up time.
Work backwards 7-8 hours from wake-up time. This is the time you need to be asleep. For example, if I need to get up at 7am and I need 8 hours sleep then I need to be asleep at 11pm.
Time to fall asleep. It is rare that we go to bed and instantly fall asleep, it takes ‘healthy’ sleepers between 15-20 minutes to fall asleep (1). This is known as sleep latency. In the instance above, that means the ideal bedtime for an 8 hour sleep is 10.40pm.
Do note, it may sound desirable to fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow, but this is often a sign of insufficient sleep and sleep deprivation or a medical condition. Please refer to sleep drive. Any longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep suggests there is an issue with sleep health.
Workers who work irregular shift patterns, as in some days it is through the day, other times in the evening or through the night, will find it next to impossible to create a standardised wake-up time and bed-time. Please go gently and encourage bedtime boundaries based upon the need of 7-8 hours sleep, which will vary day to day or week to week depending on the shift pattern.
Setting a Bedtime Helps with the Following Sleep Disturbances:
- FOMO
- Revenge Procrastination
- Sleep Debt
- Stress + Anxieties
Reference
- llen SF, Elder GJ, Longstaff LF, Gotts ZM, Sharman R , Akram U, Ellis JG. Exploration of potential objective and subjective daily indicators of sleep health in normal sleepers. Nature and Science of Sleep 2018, 10:303