Morning Lark or Night Owl?
Chronotype
Weekend Time-Traveler
Every Monday you land in a new time zone.
A Weekend Time-Traveler lives with social jetlag: on workdays the alarm sets your hours, on free days your body clock takes over and sleeps far later. The gap is like flying a time zone or two west every Friday and back every Monday.
It's you if…
- Saturday's breakfast is at 1 p.m., and you call it brunch.
- Sunday night you can't fall asleep, and Monday morning you can't wake up.
- By Thursday you've finally adjusted — just in time for the weekend.
The surprise
Most Time-Travelers aren't partying — they're paying back sleep. The long weekend lie-in is your body collecting a debt the working week ran up.
Best matchMidnight MakerThey're a night person too, so your late weekends line up perfectly, and neither of you has to explain the 1 p.m. breakfast.Worst matchEarly LarkThey're up at 6 every day, weekends included, and see your Saturday as half wasted.The science
“Social jetlag” was named in 2006 by Marc Wittmann, Till Roenneberg and colleagues: the gap between when your body clock wants you to sleep on free days and when the alarm makes you sleep on workdays. They measure it as the difference in the midpoint of sleep, and an hour or more is common in large surveys.
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Take the quizFrequently asked questions
What is social jetlag?
The mismatch between your natural sleep timing on free days and your alarm-driven timing on workdays, measured as the shift in the midpoint of your sleep.
Is sleeping in on weekends bad?
It's usually a sign of too little sleep during the week. A small lie-in is fine; a very large shift makes Monday feel like jet lag.
How do you reduce social jetlag?
Keep wake times within about an hour across the week, get daylight soon after waking, and dim bright lights late in the evening.
For fun, not diagnosis. The science sections cite published research; your own sleep is best judged by how you feel and, if it's a problem, by a doctor.