Wrap-up: your badge, your glossary, what comes next
You will be able to: Review the module in five lines, check your badge and set up the rest of the week.
Module 1 in five lines
- Adults are advised to sleep 7 hours or more (NHS: 7 to 9), and teenagers 8 to 10.
- Time in bed is not time asleep: good sleep is usually 85% or more of your time in bed.
- After about 17 hours awake, some of your reactions can match being at the Scottish drink-drive limit.
- Sleep debt builds quietly, and a weekend lie-in does not fully clear it.
- A steady wake-up time is the anchor for everything else in this course.
Your sleep score card
Once you have logged at least three nights (with the check-in or the diary), this card sums up your own logs: how long, how regular and how rested. Save it as an image or copy it as text. It is made in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Your badges
Missing the Module 1 badge? Check the progress bar at the top: every required unit needs a tick, and the quiz needs 6 out of 8.
Glossary for this module
- Anchor time
- One wake-up time that you keep on all seven days, within about 30 minutes.
- Caffeine half-life
- The time it takes the body to clear half of the caffeine taken in; about 4 hours on average in healthy adults, from 2 to 8 hours between people.
- Chronotype
- Where your body clock sits on the range from early (morning types) to late (evening types). It shifts with age.
- Deep sleep (N3)
- The deepest stage of non-REM sleep, in longer periods during the first half of the night.
- Lapse
- In a reaction test, a response that is very slow (500 ms or more), a sensitive sign of sleep loss.
- REM sleep
- Rapid eye movement sleep, when most dreaming happens; REM periods get longer later in the night.
- Estimated sleep
- Time from lights out to your final wake-up, minus the time it took to fall asleep and the time you were awake in the night.
- Lights-out window
- The range of times to switch off the light so that you get your recommended sleep before your anchor time.
- Sleep debt
- The gap between the sleep you need and the sleep you get, added up over several nights.
- Sleep efficiency
- Estimated sleep divided by time in bed, as a percentage. 85% or more is a sign of good-quality sleep.
- Sleep latency
- The minutes between starting to try to sleep and actually dropping off. Within 30 minutes is a sign of good sleep.
- Sleep regularity
- How similar your sleep and wake times are from one day to the next.
- Time in bed
- From getting into bed to getting out of bed in the morning.
- Wake after sleep onset
- The total time you are awake in the night after first falling asleep.
- Wind-down
- A calm, dim, screen-light period before lights out that tells your evening it is landing.
One sentence for yourself
Before you go, finish this sentence on paper or in your notes. It takes 30 seconds and it is the start of your final sleep plan:
"The one thing I most want to find out from my diary this week is ______________________."
What is next
Module 2: Your two sleep switches. Why you feel sleepy at night and alert in the morning (most days): your body clock, the pressure to sleep that builds while you are awake, and how light and caffeine push on both. Keep filling in your diary: Module 2 will show you what to look for in it.