Tools Self-checks up to 10 questions

How is my sleep really doing?

up to 10 questions · about 3 minutes · scored on your device, nothing saved

This is educational, not diagnostic. These questions help you notice a pattern in your own routine. They cannot tell you what is causing it, and they are not a substitute for care from a doctor or clinician.

Your answers are scored on your device. Nothing you enter here is sent to us or saved.

Sleep does not have one dial. Research that looks at it properly measures several things separately: when you sleep, how long for, how easily you fall and stay asleep, how you function in the afternoon. And it finds they are only loosely related to each other. That is why you can get eight hours and still feel wrecked, and why a single sleep score is not much use.

So this check does not give you one. It counts how many of five things are currently going well and then tells you which one is costing you, because that is the part you can do something about tonight.

One thing it deliberately does not do: it does not look at your breathing during sleep. We ask about snoring, but that question sits outside the count and is handled on its own, because breathing during sleep is a different question from sleep habits and habit changes will not address it.

How this self-check is put together

It counts five things separately rather than averaging them into one score, because that is what the research does. Sleep health is now generally treated as multidimensional, several distinct properties rather than a single quality (Buysse 2014), and the dimensions turn out to be only loosely related to each other. In one diverse cohort, favourable timing regularity was present in just 21.4% of people and favourable duration regularity in 36.9%, even though 62.7% were favourable on sleep duration, and the dimensions correlated anywhere from zero to -0.72 (Chung 2021). That is why a single number would hide the useful information, and why the result leads with which part is short.

Where the bands come from. Large cohort studies use a five-item sleep score built from exactly this kind of self-report and band it as 0-2, 3-4 and 5. Those bands carry published outcome data: the healthy band against the poor band was associated with lower cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.690, 95% CI 0.519-0.916) and lower heart failure risk (HR 0.653, 95% CI 0.488-0.875) in 6,860 people with type 2 diabetes (Hu 2024), and the same 0-5 composite replicated in 384,758 UK Biobank participants, where the individual dimensions contributed between 7.9% and 20.7% of the risk reduction, the largest single contribution coming from infrequent daytime sleepiness (Bai 2024).

Two things we want to be straight about, because they are the difference between citing research and hiding behind it. First, those hazard ratios describe groups of people in specific cohorts, one of them people with type 2 diabetes, and they are the reason we chose 0-2, 3-4 and 5 as the boundaries. They are not a statement about your risk, and this page does not calculate one. Second, our five dimensions are not identical to the published five. The published composite counts snoring as one of its five; we have taken snoring out of the count and put sleep regularity in instead, for the two reasons given below. So this is Femy's own count, informed by that research, and it does not inherit those hazard ratios.

Why snoring sits outside the count. Because folding it in would be the worst of both worlds: no routing, and a habit plan for something habits will not fix. Loud snoring, witnessed pauses in breathing, heavy daytime sleepiness and high blood pressure are the four questions of a screening tool validated against overnight sleep studies, but developed in patients about to have surgery (Chung 2008), a group whose starting likelihood is nothing like that of a woman reading a sleep article. We ask the questions in our own words, we do not compute that tool's score, and we use the answers only to say when this is a conversation for your GP. It matters for older users in particular: postmenopausal women in one large Canadian cohort screened positive for obstructive sleep apnoea more often than pre- and perimenopausal women (14.6% against 10.4%, adjusted OR 1.48, Zolfaghari 2020).

Why regularity is in the count. Because it is the dimension with the strongest recent evidence and the one a daily programme can actually move. Across the four more-regular fifths of a UK Biobank accelerometry sample, all-cause mortality risk was 20-48% lower than in the least regular fifth, and formal model comparison found regularity a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (Windred 2024), a finding independently corroborated in the same cohort (Cribb 2023) and reviewed across outcomes, where the least regular sleepers showed 20-88% higher all-cause mortality and 26-53% higher dementia risk independent of duration and quality (Kalkanis 2025). There is a plausible mechanism too: irregular sleepers had their melatonin onset nearly three hours later than regular sleepers (Phillips 2017).

Limits of this estimate. The published bands come from cohorts that are not Femy's audience, and our count is not the published composite; both are reasons to read the band as a description of your habits. Our regularity question asks for the spread between your earliest and latest night, while the research uses wrist accelerometry and a formal index: a self-reported spread is not the same measurement and the two are not comparable. The published quintile figures, 2.23 hours of onset variation in the least regular fifth against 0.78 hours in the most regular (Windred 2021), are what our two-hour boundary is calibrated against, not a threshold you have crossed. Even between researchers, regularity is not one settled number: the two widely used open-source calculators produce non-equivalent scores from identical data (Windred 2026), which is a further reason we report a spread in hours rather than an index. Everything here is self-reported, from memory, about a typical week, and people are reasonable but not precise at this. And if you work shifts, the timing and regularity parts do not really apply, because your schedule is not yours to set.

Persistent problems deserve support. If falling or staying asleep has been difficult three or more nights a week for months, that is worth a conversation rather than another habit. There are effective non-medication approaches: cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia has large pooled effects on insomnia severity and sleep efficiency against untreated controls (van Straten 2017), and your GP can point you towards them. Insomnia also roughly doubles the odds of later depression in people who are not depressed to begin with (Baglioni 2011), which is another reason not to treat it as something to put up with.

Common questions

How should I use this estimate?

Read the named part, not the count. The five parts of sleep are only loosely related, so the useful move is the one that addresses the specific part that came out short.

Is this medical advice?

No. Femy is educational content about wellness habits. It does not diagnose, treat, or replace care from a doctor or clinician.

Does this tell me if I have insomnia?

No, and it is not a sleep disorder assessment. It counts how many of five sleep behaviours are currently going well. If difficulty falling or staying asleep has been happening three or more nights a week for months, that is a conversation for your GP, and there are effective non-medication approaches they can refer you to.

Does this check for sleep apnoea?

No. This quiz does not look at your breathing during sleep, and a good result here does not rule anything out. If you snore heavily or someone has seen you stop breathing at night, raise that with your GP separately: it is a different question from sleep habits and habit changes will not address it.

I get eight hours and still feel exhausted. Why?

Because hours are one of five parts, and not the one with the strongest recent evidence. When your sleep happens, and how much that moves across the week, predicts long-run health at least as well as how long you sleep. Our tiredness self-check is designed for exactly this question if sleep is not the answer.

What happens to what I enter?

It is scored on your device as you go. Nothing you type here is sent to us or saved. We count how many people finish and which of the three results they get, as totals only.

Sources checked

Built from published research, with every source listed below. We checked these sources for the figures we quote: the typical ranges, the guideline targets, and the doses used in the trials we describe. We compare your answers to published general guidance for adults. We have not tested this quiz against any clinical measure.

  1. Hu (2024). Sleep patterns and risks of incident cardiovascular disease and mortality among people with type 2 diabetes: a prospective study of the UK Biobank. Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome. doi.org/10.1186/s13098-024-01261-8
  2. Bai (2024). Sleep patterns, genetic susceptibility, and venous thromboembolism: A prospective study of 384,758 UK Biobank participants. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309870
  3. Buysse (2014). Sleep Health: Can We Define It? Does It Matter?. Sleep. doi.org/10.5665/sleep.3298
  4. Chung (2021). Multidimensional sleep health in a diverse, aging adult cohort: Concepts, advances, and implications for research and intervention. Sleep Health. doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2021.08.005
  5. Windred (2024). Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration: A prospective cohort study. SLEEP. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsad253
  6. Cribb (2023). Sleep regularity and mortality: a prospective analysis in the UK Biobank. eLife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.88359
  7. Kalkanis (2025). Sleep regularity as an important component of sleep hygiene: a systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews. doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2025.102203
  8. Windred (2021). Objective assessment of sleep regularity in 60 000 UK Biobank participants using an open-source package. Sleep. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsab254
  9. Czeisler (2026). Comparison of Sleep Regularity Index scores calculated by open-source packages and implications for outcomes research: rationale and design of the RIRI statement (Reporting Items for Regularity Indices). SLEEPJ. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf299
  10. Phillips (2017). Irregular sleep/wake patterns are associated with poorer academic performance and delayed circadian and sleep/wake timing. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-03171-4
  11. Chung (2008). STOP Questionnaire. Anesthesiology. doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0b013e31816d83e4
  12. Zolfaghari (2020). Effects of menopause on sleep quality and sleep disorders: Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Menopause. doi.org/10.1097/GME.0000000000001462
  13. van Straten (2018). Cognitive and behavioral therapies in the treatment of insomnia: A meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2017.02.001
  14. Baglioni (2011). Insomnia as a predictor of depression: A meta-analytic evaluation of longitudinal epidemiological studies. Journal of Affective Disorders. doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.01.011
  15. Wasilah (2026). Effectiveness of morning blue light therapy on sleep and daytime symptoms in adults with primary and comorbid insomnia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized control trials. International Journal of Nursing Studies. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2026.105588
  16. Roenneberg (2003). Life between Clocks: Daily Temporal Patterns of Human Chronotypes. Journal of Biological Rhythms. doi.org/10.1177/0748730402239679
  17. Zhang (2006). Sex Differences in Insomnia: A Meta-Analysis. Sleep. doi.org/10.1093/sleep/29.1.85