I've heard interesting comments from both sides of this issue. Some people say that sleep cycles get longer as the night goes on, while others say that they get gradually shorter.
Although I was originally going to try to compensate for this variation, I instead decided to go with the average sleep cycle times instead. There is always going to be some variance in the length of cycles (usually between about 75 minutes and about 110 minutes), but the average is pretty well documented to be about an hour and a half.
Although it's definitely true that some people will have drastically differently timed sleep cycles, this is usually due to some other neurological condition. My theory is that short of that, the law of averages will help me out :)
Well, suppose I need to get up at 07:30. It advises me to go to sleep at 22:30, which is 9 hours, or 6 cycles. If I'm out by just 10 minutes, that's an hour.
So perhaps I should go to sleep at 21:30. Or at 23:30.
There's a big difference.
I do love the idea - the challenge it trying to work out whether I'm average.
Although I was originally going to try to compensate for this variation, I instead decided to go with the average sleep cycle times instead. There is always going to be some variance in the length of cycles (usually between about 75 minutes and about 110 minutes), but the average is pretty well documented to be about an hour and a half.
Although it's definitely true that some people will have drastically differently timed sleep cycles, this is usually due to some other neurological condition. My theory is that short of that, the law of averages will help me out :)