The technology of sleep

During winter break, my son woke up every morning at around 6 am in an insanely cheerful mood and ready to tackle whatever fun the day would bring. (Mind you, this is the same little bear who grumbles and growls every other morning when his alarm goes off around 7 am.) Although I enjoyed the morning company, after five days of this I asked why he was able to get up so much earlier during his time off. He said it was because he wanted to have the most fun in his days off as possible and didn't need as much sleep on non-school days.

I, on the other hand, need my sleep.

For more than a year I wore a fitbit and became enamored of my sleep data. I loved seeing how much sleep I actually got, but I ran into an eventual problem - the only thing I could do was look at my data. There was no way to "fix" my sleep behaviors based off my numbers...they were just numbers.

So, I was a little tickled to read about all the new sleep tech that is out there - from wearables and pillows to entire mattresses that collect movements. And while some things can be adjusted (like the temperature of a pillow or the contours of a mattress), we are really just collecting data on ourselves and have no way to fix the main problem: We all need more sleep.

I wonder if anyone has tracked if sleep increases when we remove all the devices from the bedroom.

In other news, it's good to be back at school and to our regular routines again. (Well, it was...then we had a snowy weekend and now school is cancelled.)

How much sleep do you normally get each night? Tell me in the comments.