A script to calculate how much life time you gain by sleeping X minutes less each day.
Gain lifetime with the Sleep Less script
When you sleep you are unconscious. If you sleep a few minutes less every day, you gain valuable minutes that are added to your conscious life time. If you keep doing that, it adds up to a lot of time gained.
But how much time do you gain if for example you wake up 5 minutes earlier from now on?
That depends of course on how many years you will still live. We don’t know that (fortunately), but we can estimate it from your current age and your life expectancy. How much time you gain also depends on how long you are currently sleeping.
Example
Let’s use the following figures: You sleep 8 hours each night and are going to shorten that with 5 minutes. You are 40 years old and you expect to live until you are 80. Now let’s calculate.
You have 80 – 40 = 40 years to go, which is 40 x 365.25 days (= 14,610 days). Waking up 5 minutes earlier each day will give you an extra 73,050 minutes, which is 1217.5 hours. As you sleep 8 hours, you have now 16 hours of conscious life per day. The 5 minutes sleep reduction will thus gain you 1217.5 / 16 = 76 days (of 16 hours). It is as if you live 76 days longer while still dying at the same moment. Setting your alarm 15 minutes earlier would triple this to 228 days.
Now you can make this calculation with your own age, sleeping habits and life expectancy. Enter your information in the form and click the “calculate” button.
A friendly warning
Of course you should not exaggerate and sleep too short. An average healthy adult needs between 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Make sure that you get the sleep your body and brain need, but realize that it is also important that you don’t sleep too long. Some research has indicated that people who sleep too long will live shorter.
Setting the alarm a few minutes earlier every day should not be a problem for most of us, and all these minutes add up to a lot of extra life. Time to start adjusting your alarm clock?
