Define Your Own Optimal Sleep
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
A self-diagnostic method for replacing the universal eight-hour rule with your own sleep requirement. The core claim is that one shoe size does not fit all: healthy adult sleep ranges from around six hours to ten or eleven, and an average value has been wrongly adopted as the optimum for everyone. Instead of consulting an app, you run a short list of grandparent-grade questions — do you need an alarm or a partner to wake you, does waking take a long time, do you crave caffeine and sugar to stay awake, have people noticed you are less empathetic or more frustrated, does your sleep pattern change on holiday. Then you define what you personally need and adopt behaviours that defend it, accounting for your chronotype and the fact that your requirement shifts as you age.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Reject the single number
Accept that healthy adult sleep ranges from around six hours, maybe slightly less, out to ten or eleven. There is an average, but the individual variation is so large that imposing a specific amount on everyone is wrong.
Watch out Fear about not hitting eight hours creates anxiety that itself damages sleep.
- 2
Run the wake-up check
Ask whether you need a partner or an alarm clock to wake you in the morning, and whether it takes you a long time to wake up. Both point to a shortfall against your own requirement.
- 3
Run the stimulant check
Ask whether you crave caffeinated and sugar-rich drinks during the day to keep yourself awake. Chronic reliance on stimulants to stay functional is a signal, not a personality trait.
Pro tip Track it for a week rather than recalling it — the count is usually higher than the memory.
- 4
Run the social check
Ask whether friends, family or colleagues have reported a lack of empathy or increased frustration, or noticed you doing stupid and unreflective things. Other people detect sleep debt before you do.
Pro tip Ask one person directly rather than waiting to be told.
- 5
Run the holiday check
When given a genuine opportunity to sleep — at the weekend and very notably on holiday — do your sleep patterns change? A large rebound reveals the gap between what you take and what you need.
- 6
Account for chronotype and age
Your timing depends on genetics and light exposure. Morning light advances the clock; evening light delays it. From about age 10 the tendency is to go to bed later, peaking around 21 in males and 19 in females, then shifting back toward a morning chronotype with age.
Pro tip If you are a late chronotype, get morning light — late sleepers typically miss it and then get delaying evening light instead.
- 7
Defend the pattern you defined
Adopt behaviours that protect your sleep pattern: consistent wake time, eating at the same time, light exposure at the same time. These stabilise the circadian system. Allow flexibility for the occasional late night — sleep is dynamic and can be tweaked.
Watch out Do not outsource the verdict to a sleep app — none are endorsed by sleep federations or FDA approved.
In the wild
The guest describes looking at university students across Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Holland and the UK. Those with the latest chronotype — up late, to bed late — were sleeping through the morning and missing the morning light that would have advanced their clock and pulled their wake time earlier. Meanwhile they were getting evening light, which delays the clock. The asymmetry compounded: the light they received pushed them later still, deepening exactly the pattern they were struggling with.
→ Identified light exposure, not willpower, as the lever on wake time for late chronotypes.
After a public talk, a member of the audience approached the guest and asked, in effect, whether not getting eight hours meant they were going to die. He replied that they were certainly going to die, but it might have nothing to do with their sleep. He uses the exchange to illustrate how the universal eight-hour mantra, reinforced by app verdicts on 'good' and 'bad' nights, has made people frightened of their sleep and anxious about it rather than embracing the sleep they actually get.
→ Anxiety reframed: the correct response is to run the self-checks, not to chase a population average.
Common mistakes
Trusting a sleep app's verdict
No sleep apps are endorsed by sleep federations or FDA approved, their validation studies often rest on a handful of undergraduates, and they lack the sensitivity to detect things like slow wave sleep. One algorithm cannot describe sleep that varies between individuals and across a lifetime.
Becoming anxious about the number
Rather than embracing the sleep they get, people become frightened about it. The anxiety generated by chasing a universal figure is itself a problem, and it is reinforced by apps declaring nights good or bad.
Ignoring chronic deprivation entirely
Rejecting the eight-hour mantra is not permission to run on empty. There is evidence that chronic sleep deprivation in the middle years increases the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia — the point is individual calibration plus responsibility, not indifference.
From the transcript
“one shoe size doesn't fit all”
“do you need a partner or an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning?”
“it's really defining what each of us needs and then trying to adopt behaviors that defend that sleep pattern”
From the episode
7 Lessons I'm Taking Into 2023 - Season 4 Wrapped
Season 4 Wrapped