This Formula Will Calculate Your Perfect Bedtime

Getting enough sleep is a constant struggle for us millennials — we’re distracted by Netflix, perpetually stressed by post-grad worries, thrown off by our napping patterns, and most importantly, many of us don’t really know when we should going to bed. Well, we now have information that will take care of at least one reason for your sleep deprivation (and sorry, it’s not how to finally kick that Netflix addiction)… your perfect bedtime can actually be determined by a simple formula.

PhD and board-certified sleep specialist Michael Breus came up with a simple principle that will help you figure out when you need to get to bed in order to feel well rested and refreshed in the morning. According to Breus, the average human has five sleep cycles per night, and the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes long, meaning that most people need around 7.5 hours of sleep per night. Working back from your desired wake-up time will then help you figure out what bedtime is best for your schedule. This means that if you have to wake up at 7 a.m., you should be in bed by 11:30 p.m.

Breus claims that if you follow this bedtime rule 10 days in a row, your body will naturally acclimate and be able to wake up without assistance. The key to making this work is consistency, so you have to be sure to get in and out of bed at the same time every night if you want to finally be rid of your alarm’s awful ringing.

So while I don’t necessarily expect anyone to spend the next week and a half perfecting their bedtime routine, this simple trick is good information to have for when you decided to take care of that Netflix habit and finally get some rest.

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