“Be in bed by 11pm” is magazine advice. It does not know when you have to get up, how much you came up short last week, or how long you toss and turn before falling asleep. The widget works out a bedtime for you personally and recalculates it every day.

Counting back from your wake-up

The starting point is not the evening but the morning. We take the moment you will actually get up and wind back from there.

  • Your alarm. If the band has a morning alarm set, we take the nearest one.
  • Your habit. If there is no alarm, we look at when you usually wake up on your own, over the last two weeks.

The alarm beats the habit only when it is earlier. If you normally get up at 7:20 and the alarm sits at 9:00 “just in case”, counting from it makes no sense.

Your sleep baseline is not eight hours

To your wake-up we add not a round number from the internet but your own baseline. It has two parts:

  • The base — how much you need when you are well rested. It differs from person to person, and we find yours from your own nights.
  • Topping up for missed sleep. If recent nights ran short, the difference accumulates. Fresh debt weighs more than old: an hour lost the day before yesterday matters more than an hour lost a week ago.

So after a calm week your Monday bedtime is one thing, and after three short nights your Thursday bedtime is half an hour earlier. This is not a punishment: it is how the debt stops growing.

Plus the time it takes you to fall asleep

Lying down is not the same as sleeping. We add the time you usually spend falling asleep, worked out from your nights over two weeks. For some it is eight minutes, for others thirty-five. While there is little data we take a cautious average and say honestly that it is not yours yet.

What the widget does not do

  • It does not wake you and does not forbid anything. It is a reference point, not a regime.
  • It knows nothing about your plans. A concert tonight will shift your bedtime; the widget will simply see it tomorrow.
  • It does not treat a daytime nap as a full replacement for the night, though it does count it towards the debt.

What to do with it

Start winding down half an hour before the time the widget shows: dimmed lights and a phone put away move your falling asleep more than you would think. Hitting that time three or four times a week is already enough to keep the debt from growing — and you will see it in your recovery within a few days.