We know sticking to a regular sleep schedule is key to falling asleep fast and getting good quality sleep throughout the night.
While it seems simple, finding the discipline to put your phone down at bedtime and drag yourself out of bed early in the morning can be hard.
From the best smart beds that help you regulate your temperature to sleep headphones that lull you to sleep with music, there are plenty of gadgets to help you overcome your sleep woes. But if sticking to a regular sleep routine is your main sleep vice, the Rise Science sleep app is the sleep tech you need.
I’ve been using this app for a month to track my sleep routine and learn more about my energy potential. Despite being initially sceptical, I have to admit my sleep has improved.
But what does it actually do? I’m diving deeper into my experience so you can find out if it’s the right sleep gear for you.
What is the Rise sleep app?
Founded by sleep scientists Jeff Kahn and Leon Sasson, who have experience in helping top-tier athletes improve their performance with the power of sleep, Rise is a mobile app that monitors your sleep debt, helps you harness your energy levels throughout the day and stay on track with your sleep schedule.
It does this through a built-in alarm clock, a daily energy chart and sleep coaching based on your own biology.
Although it can’t singly track metrics like your sleep quality and sleep cycles, you can pair the app with a wearable tracker from the likes of Oura, Garmin, Apple or Fitbit for more accurate sleep and energy data.
First thoughts on the Rise app
The set up process includes answering a series of questions about your sleep habits, daily movement and energy levels, and agreeing to the subscription fee ($69.99/year with 7 day subscription).
While I initially thought this was pricey for a mobile app, a CNET survey shows Americans are willing to pay up to $1,000 a year to improve their sleep. So, this subscription fee is a minor dip in that budget.
After transferring data from my health trackers, the app calculated my ideal sleep routine, how much sleep I personally needed each night and the initial sleep debt I was in.
I was surprised by the metrics it came up with. According to the app, I need 7.5 hours of sleep a night (I always assumed I needed more around the 8 hour mark).
Interesting but not life changing. What really threw me was the time it was suggesting I went to sleep and woke up.
I’m all for a 9:30pm bedtime but an alarm between 4:45am and 5:45am seemed a bit extreme. But why not give it a try? So, I trusted the app and the sleep specialists behind it and put this routine to the test.
3 things I found when using the Rise app
It helped organize and optimize my sleep schedule
Rise gives you a ‘smart bedtime’ and ‘smart wake up time’ (aka a sleep / wake up time goal) which helps you organize your sleep schedule.
Sticking to these suggestions has been helping me fall asleep fast and sleep through the night undisturbed.
I used to focus on sleep duration, counting up the hours I’d sleep if I went to bed at X time and set my alarm for X.
But Rise takes that mental load away, optimizing your sleep schedule for you based on your daytime activity (when paired to a fitness tracker) and melatonin window.
It sends you notifications telling you when the best time is for you to have your last caffeine hit, start winding down, and go to bed for the best quality sleep.
Rather than focussing on overall sleep duration, Rise encourages you to hit bedtime and wake time goals.
This is a good method of optimizing your sleep routine as emerging research suggests sleep regularity, the day-to-day consistency of sleep-wake timing, can be a stronger predictor for some health outcomes than sleep duration.
My energy dips and peaks were as expected
The app sends you notifications alerting you to when you’re likely to feel energy peaks and dips.
It works off the basis that it takes 90 minutes for sleep hormones to leave your body, meaning your morning energy peak should arrive 90 minutes after waking.
Be it placebo or not, I have found the energy peaks and dips to be accurate. I am a morning person through and through and the app has shown this with my predicted energy levels.
I’ve long found myself victim to the typical 3pm dip, and the app has accurately predicted this. And, unsurprisingly, I tend to have a burst of energy when closing my laptop at 5:30pm.
The notifications are a handy reminder to harness your energy peaks and dips. The ‘peak approaching’ notifications have been encouraging me to get things picked off my to-do list.
Meanwhile, the ‘dip approaching’ remind me to give myself a break amid a world where constant productivity and an ‘always-on culture’ are causing burn out.
It is natural for the human body to experience these energy fluctuations throughout the day, after all.
It accounted for a heavy weekend away
I was doing well at sticking to my Rise sleep schedule with my energy potential sitting in the 90th percentile, even hitting 99% some days.
But, as a 20-something, you can’t be entirely committed to an early bedtime if you want to maintain a social life, and a heavy weekend away sent my schedule into disarray.
I racked up a high sleep debt thanks to a trip full of cocktails and late nights, but the app accounted for this in my suggested sleep schedule the following week and added 25 minutes to my nightly sleep need.
It also reassured me that after two nights back in routine, my sleep debt returned from a ‘high’ to an ‘okay’ range.
As someone who likes to ‘do it all’, balancing wellness and fitness alongside a busy work and social life, I like how Rise allocates your sleep debt.
Splitting it up into 25 minutes over the week makes catching up on rest seem more manageable.
Whereas before I assumed I’d need to spend a full day bed bound after a night out to recover, following Rise’s suggested sleep times has proven you can catch up on sleep incrementally.
I’ve felt more refreshed this week than I usually do after a groggy day in bed.
Final thoughts
After a month of regularly sticking to the Rise app suggestions, I found it was very helpful for forming a consistent sleep schedule, managing sleep debt and learning more about how sleep affects your energy levels throughout the day.
But, admittedly, it didn’t do anything revolutionary compared to other sleep trackers. In fact, without sensors in touch with your body, it can’t measure your sleep patterns or sleep cycles like most trackers can.
So, for more bang for your buck, you may be better off investing in a wearable tracker that can measure your sleep stages and overnight heart rate to give you an accurate picture of your sleep quality and how restorative your sleep has been. These trackers also hold you accountable around your routine.
But these wearable trackers will command a higher price. Garmin watches that track sleep cost $200 or more and an Oura Ring will set you back upwards of $249. That said, you can get a Fitbit Inspire 3 sleep and health tracker around the same price point as a yearly subscription to the Rise app.
With multiple notifications sent a day, it is important not to become fixated on the app as this risks orthosomnia, an unhealthy obsession with achieving “perfect” sleep.
Instead use it as a tool for holding yourself accountable around your sleep schedule. As my experience has shown, a weekend of little sleep can be fixed.
