Sleep Cycle

Lifehacker Review: A sleep quantification tool and precision alarm clock

An app that turns your phone into a surprisingly effective sleep optimization device.

I'm a little late to the sleep-hacking party. For some reason, I was a little reluctant to start quantifying my sleep. However, I kept hearing about the sleep cycle app from people like Dave Asprey and Pat Flynn. I finally paid the $2 and downloaded it. I'm glad I tried it! It does improve your sleep. I'm a person that's always kind of had issues with waking up on time. I would just hit the snooze button chronically, this has caused me to fail some classes and lose some jobs.

The no snooze habit was suggested to me, which is pretty straightforward; you pick a time to wake up before going to bed and just never use the snooze button, and it does improve your productivity by giving you more time in the mornings. But it's really hard to practice and a lot of times it makes me exhausted in the morning. 
I seem to do way better ignoring the snooze button and getting out of bed with the optimized wake-up time of the Sleep Cycle alarm. As you can see in on my Coach.me profile I've done a pretty good job of practicing no snooze lately. Which is something that I've been bad at for much of my life.

I used it for several years and it's a great tool for gamifying your biohacking. I try to combine different sleep hacks to aim for the highest sleep score...

• Avoiding blue light and using a red light before bed
• Practicing non-stimulatory thinking
• Meditation and relaxing breathing
• Relaxing Chamomile tea
• Tranquilizing cocktail of Apple cider vinegar and honey
• Sometimes supplementing Melatonin

Update: I now don't use this app because I turn my smartphone off at night and it's a pretty bad idea to sleep with your smartphone - I think something like an Oura Ring is a better option.
Also, apparently Sleep Cycle premium now costs $9.99 per month or $39.99 per year - that's pretty steep inflation over the $2 that I once paid for the app! The free version is at least worth trying.