What time should you go to bed?

The short answer

Work back from the time you get up. Adults are advised to sleep 7 hours or more a night, so if you get up at 6:30, being asleep by 11:30 or earlier gives you that. Then keep the same times on most days, weekends included.

What the sources say

• "Adults should sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis" (American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society, Watson et al., 2015). The CDC gives 7 or more hours for adults 18 to 60, 7 to 9 for 61 to 64, and 7 to 8 for 65 and older (CDC, About Sleep).
• "Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations. Set a bedtime that is early enough for you to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep" (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Healthy Sleep Habits).
• The NIH's heart, lung and blood institute adds: "Try to keep the same sleep schedule on weeknights and weekends. Limit the difference to no more than about an hour" (NHLBI, Healthy Sleep Habits).

Work out your time

Falling asleep takes a while, so getting into bed a little earlier than the time you choose helps.

Set it up in Landmark

Landmark tracks the time you fall asleep, not how long you sleep. When you fall asleep is something you can choose; how long you sleep is not, so Landmark keeps sleep length as a goal you can watch, never a task. It reads the time you fell asleep from Apple Health, so it needs something that records sleep: an Apple Watch, or another tracker or app that writes sleep to Health.

1. Open the Goals tab and tap +, then Habit, then Asleep by.
2. Type the time you want to be asleep by. It is the same time every night, which is what the sleep experts above recommend.
3. Under Days you can turn some nights off. A night off is never counted as missed.

Today counts down to that time, and the habit is met on each night you were asleep before it.