Life

How Does Your Country Sleep?

by Cecily Trowbridge

If you've ever wondered how certain countries are more productive than others, the secret may lie in the world's sleeping habits — but not the way one would assume. According to new research on the matter compiled by the app Sleep Cycle, people in countries the world over are failing to come anywhere close to the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night. So hey, at least we're all in the same boat, right?

Sleep Cycle sourced their data from 941,300 app users internationally who identified as both male and female. There are a ton of takeaways from it in addition to the whole eight hours, thing, though. It would seem, for example, that Monday has been redeemed; Tuesdays largely topped out as the one day that respondents woke up grumpiest and least likely to have gotten the proper shuteye, something which was true from Singapore to South Africa to America. It's also notable that, averaging six to seven hours a night, Asian countries are getting the smallest amount of sleep.

The findings weren't broken down by gender, but I can't but wonder if it might have ben interesting to do so. How do the numbers differ for men and women? We can only guess. Although, the coffee companies are thriving, so there's a plus.

There were also quite a few surprising turn-outs: For example, 58 percent of the countries involved in the study cited Wednesday as their most restful night of sleep — including Friday and Saturday. It also seems true that the Middle East as a whole runs on a different cycle than the rest of the world, as respondents from that country reported being "happiest" and most energized on Thursdays. The earliest wake-up time of them all, it seems, is on Monday in South Africa. But what's most shocking is the overall score for each country: Slovakia came out as the nation experiencing the number one highest quality of sleep, closely followed by China, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

Normally at this juncture I'd venture to point out that the elderly and retired may be playing great parts in skewing these findings, but as the data was extracted from an app, that might not be the case (depending on how up on their tech the older generations of each country are). So while more sleep is amazing, this info makes it clear that more doesn't necessarily equal better.

Check out more of the study's findings here.

Images: Giuseppe Martino/Flickr; Giphy (2)