What the AASM recommends
From the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s shift-work fact sheet:
- Protect your sleep time: block noise with fans, white noise or earplugs, and sleep in a dark room or with an eye mask.
- Wear sunglasses on the way home, so morning light doesn’t pull your body clock back toward a daytime schedule.
- Keep naps during the shift short, no longer than 30 minutes, to avoid sleep inertia.
- On a fixed (non-rotating) schedule, keep the same sleep times on workdays and days off.
- Aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep as a baseline.
Example sleep blocks
Shift 22:00–07:00, home at 08:00, 15 minutes to fall asleep, 90-minute cycles:
| Approach | Sleep block | Total |
|---|---|---|
| One block (5 cycles) | bed 08:30 → up 16:15 | 7h 30m |
| One block (6 cycles) | bed 08:30 → up 17:45 | 9h |
| Split | 08:30 → 14:45 (4 cycles) + 20-min nap before work | about 6h 20m |
Split sleep tends to come up short, so plan to make it up on days off. On a rotating schedule, recalculate the block every time your shift changes.
Things to know in the app
- The bedtime notification fires once a day at one fixed time. Change the reminder time when your shift changes.
- Bedtime regularity and average bedtime in Stats are designed for evening-to-early-morning bedtimes. If some bedtimes fall around noon, the numbers may look off.
- Average sleep by weekday is grouped by the day you woke up.
Calculating daytime sleep
Use "When to wake?" with a morning bedtime
In Sleep Calculator, choose When to wake? and set a morning time like 08:30 with the clock button. You get recommended wake times for that bedtime. Right after a shift, just tap Now.
Pre-shift nap in the Nap tab
For a short top-up before work, open Nap, choose 10, 20 or 30 minutes and set the alarm.
Log daytime sleep too
In the Log tab, Log last night accepts any date and any times, so daytime sleep is counted as sleep and feeds into your sleep debt.
FAQ
Can I log a split sleep as two entries?
Each record is one fell-asleep and one woke-up time, so two blocks become two records. Each one is compared with your goal separately, so the sleep debt may look larger than it really is.
I get very sleepy on shift.
Keep on-shift naps to 30 minutes or less. If you are at risk of drowsy driving, nap before leaving or use other transport. Nap lengths are compared in 20 vs 90-minute naps.
Sleep Calculator
No sign-up, and your sleep log stays on your phone. Free on Android.