I love this! I could only be better if there was an iPhone app, but one does not really need it.
I have a FitBit Flex and I wear it constantly. I only take it off to charge, and I only do that when I don’t plan on moving around too much (such as now when I am in bed typing and not getting up to move around). Every night (ideally), once I am really ready to sleep, I set it into sleep mode and go to sleep. It tracks actual resting time (deep sleep v. restlessness and wakefulness). Of course, if I forget to set it, I just have to remember when I went to bed and enter it on the app. I always look at the time before I go to sleep, so it’s easy for me. I do not know why I check the time when I am going to sleep, but I always have to check.
In any case, Sleep Debt by Rocket Tools has certainly helped a lot with getting more downtime at the right time. This is how it works:
- You go on their site and connect to your FitBit (by logging in to your FitBit account and authorizing the app);
- Enter the time for which your alarm is set (6:00 a.m. on weekdays, in my case) and your desired sleep period (7.5 hours for me); here, you can also choose to include naps in your daily calculation (which I do in the rare case I get a nap);
- Sleep Debt will collect the last 7 days worth of sleep data from FitBit and give you a bedtime based on that; and
- (Optional) You can choose to have Sleep Debt text you before your “scheduled” bedtime too.
I love getting those text messages and seeing that I have ZERO sleep debt; but I hate when it tells me to go to bed at 9! It will never tell you to go to bed more than 1 hour and 30 minutes more than your desired sleep period, and it does get your weekday and weekend alarm times from FitBit, if you have them set.
Since I started using Sleep Debt, I have at least a couple of days a week where I am debt free – which is saying a lot if we are talking about sleep, and even if we weren’t.