Sleep Hygiene Path Planner

Priority{{ resultsReady ? computation.values.priority_label : '—' }} Weekly debt{{ resultsReady ? formatHours(computation.values.weekly_debt_hours) : '—' }} Diary SE{{ resultsReady ? formatPercent(computation.normalizedInputs.sleep_efficiency_pct) : '—' }}

Sleep-window visual unavailable

Main concern:

Choose the issue the first practical step should respect.

ISI total:

0–28; 15–21 is the retained moderate band.

/28

PSQI total:

0–21; higher totals indicate broader sleep-quality burden.

/21

ESS total:

0–24; values above 10 increase the daytime-sleepiness signal.

/24

DBAS-16 mean:

0–10 mean score.

/10

Sleep need:

A personal comparison value from 4 to 12 hours.

h/night

Average sleep:

Prefer a seven-night diary average.

h/night

Diary sleep efficiency:

A recent diary percentage from 0% to 100%.

Wake target:

Use the intended final rise time.

Current time in bed:

4–12 hours from the recent schedule.

Window review step:

15 minutes is the default comparison interval.

Minimum comparison window:

Used only to bound the candidate comparison ledger.

Safety context:

This is not an emergency screen. Seek urgent help for immediate danger.

Habit friction:

This changes path ordering only; it never overrides a safety caution.

Verify the first row against its source before changing the schedule. The ordering is a planning heuristic.
Step	Lane	Action	Why now	Timing	Copy
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Candidate window map

Projected efficiency compares the entered average sleep with each time-in-bed window. Review the rows; do not treat them as unsupervised restriction instructions.

The chart renderer is unavailable. Candidate values remain in the screening ledger.

Signal	Value	Band	Path implication	Source	Copy
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Poor sleep can come from too little opportunity, an irregular schedule, insomnia, daytime sleepiness, breathing problems, unhelpful beliefs, or several of these at once. Treating every complaint as a bedtime-habit problem risks missing the issue that deserves attention first.

Sleep hygiene refers to routines and conditions that support sleep, such as a regular rise time, a dark and quiet bedroom, sensible caffeine timing, and enough time set aside for rest. These habits are useful foundations. For chronic insomnia, however, clinical guidance favors cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) over sleep hygiene as a stand-alone treatment.

Several kinds of evidence answer different questions:

Symptom screeners: ISI, PSQI, ESS, and DBAS-16 totals summarize reported insomnia severity, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, and sleep-related beliefs. They do not establish a diagnosis by themselves.
Sleep diary: A representative week shows average sleep, time in bed, timing, and night-to-night variation. It gives schedule decisions a stronger basis than one unusually good or bad night.
Safety context: Sleepy driving, breathing pauses, complex clinical risks, and unstable shift schedules can make unsupervised schedule changes inappropriate.

Sleep opportunity is not the same as sleep ability. Someone who needs eight hours but averages six and a half has a weekly opportunity shortfall even if the diary also shows long periods awake in bed. Widening or narrowing time in bed without separating those problems can worsen sleepiness or reinforce frustration.

A fixed wake target provides a useful clock anchor, but bedtime is not simply a target to force. CBT-I schedule changes are normally reviewed against a diary, daytime functioning, safety, and clinical history. A projected sleep-efficiency percentage is a comparison of entered sleep with a proposed time-in-bed window, not a forecast that the person will sleep that efficiently.

Immediate danger takes priority over planning. Do not drive or perform safety-critical work when too sleepy to do so safely. Loud snoring with breathing pauses, severe daytime sleepiness, mania or hypomania risk, poorly controlled seizures, parasomnias, or another complex sleep concern warrants qualified clinical review.

How to Use This Tool:

Use completed questionnaire totals and a recent diary average. The ranking is only as reliable as those source values.

Select the Main concern, then enter completed ISI, PSQI, ESS, and DBAS-16 totals. This planner does not administer or rescore those instruments.
Enter personal Sleep need, recent Average sleep, and diary-derived Sleep efficiency. Prefer a representative seven-night period rather than one night.
Set the intended Wake target, current time in bed, comparison step, and minimum comparison window. The minimum cannot exceed the current window.
Choose every applicable Safety context. An active caution can hold the current time-in-bed window even when another entered value would otherwise suggest a comparison change.
Read the first row of Sleep path, then verify its underlying score or diary evidence in Screening ledger. Use Window map for comparison only, not as a self-directed prescription.

Interpreting Results:

Sleep path ranks seven possible lanes and shows the highest six. The selected main concern adds weight when scores are close, so the first row is a planning priority rather than a clinical conclusion. Verify the source total, diary period, and safety answer before acting.

Priority reflects the largest internal risk weight: High-priority review at 86 or more, Structured review at 65 to 85.99, and Maintenance below 65. These labels organize attention; they are not validated severity categories.

The row marked Recommended review is a bounded comparison generated by a local heuristic. If a safety score reaches 86, it stays at the current window. Projected efficiency above 100% means the entered average sleep exceeds that candidate time in bed; it does not mean efficiency can truly exceed 100% or that the shorter window is safe.

Technical Details:

The model combines published questionnaire ranges with a deterministic planning heuristic. Published measures retain their own interpretation, while route ordering, risk weights, priority labels, and candidate-window rules are planning choices rather than a validated clinical instrument.

Formula Core

Weekly opportunity shortfall compares entered sleep need with average nightly sleep. Candidate efficiency compares that same average sleep with each time-in-bed window.

\begin{matrix} {Debt}_{week} & = & \max (0, (need - average sleep) \times 7) \\ Projected efficiency & = & \frac{average sleep}{candidate window} \times 100 % \\ bedtime & = & (wake target - window minutes) \mod 1440 \end{matrix}

Weekly shortfall is retained to two decimal places and usually displayed to one. Candidate window hours and efficiency retain four decimals internally, while the visible percentage uses one decimal. Clock subtraction wraps across midnight without a date, timezone, or daylight-saving conversion.

Rule Core

Each screening band carries a weight used only for ranking. Inclusive endpoints belong to the bands shown below.

Screening, diary, and sleep-shortfall bands used by the planning model
Signal	Range	Displayed meaning	Weight
ISI	0 to 7	No clinically significant insomnia	18
	8 to 14	Subthreshold insomnia	44
	15 to 21	Moderate insomnia range	74
	22 to 28	Severe insomnia range	94
PSQI	0 to 5	At or below the common threshold	18
	6 to 10	Elevated sleep-quality burden	52
	11 to 15	High sleep-quality burden	76
	16 to 21	Broad sleep-quality burden	94
ESS	0 to 5	Lower normal sleepiness	15
	6 to 10	Higher normal sleepiness	38
	11 to 12	Mild excessive sleepiness	64
	13 to 15	Moderate excessive sleepiness	78
	16 to 24	Severe excessive sleepiness	96
DBAS-16 mean	0 to 2.99	Lower endorsement range	18
	3 to 3.79	Building endorsement range	42
	3.8 to 4.99	Planning reference crossed	68
	5 to 10	High endorsement range	88
Diary efficiency	Below 80%	Below 80%	78 plus 0.7 per point below 80, capped at 98
	80% to below 85%	80% to 84.9%	68
	85% to below 90%	85% to 89.9%	40
	90% or higher	90% or higher	22
Weekly shortfall	Below 1 hour	Opportunity close to target	12
	1 to below 4 hours	Mild weekly shortfall	36
	4 to below 8 hours	Moderate weekly shortfall	64
	8 hours or more	High weekly shortfall	88

Safety weight is the larger of the ESS band weight and the selected context weight: 0 for no selected caution, 92 for sleepy driving or work safety, 86 for apnea flags, 96 for complex clinical review, and 68 for shift work. The selected main concern adds 18 points to its matching candidate lane. Habit friction uses 18, 52, or 78 for low, moderate, or high friction, then adds 8.

Primary route decision order
Order	Condition	Primary route
1	Safety score at least 86	Safety check first
2	ISI at least 15 and diary efficiency below 85%	CBT-I diary route
3	Weekly shortfall at least 4 hours and ISI below 15	Sleep opportunity route
4	PSQI above 5	Quality component route
5	DBAS-16 mean at least 3.8	Belief review route
6	No earlier condition	Hygiene maintenance route

Candidate-window mechanism

The starting candidate rounds average sleep to the selected 10-, 15-, 20-, or 30-minute step and never goes below the minimum window. Safety scores of 86 or more hold the current window. Otherwise, efficiency of at least 90% with ESS no higher than 10 adds one step to the current window; efficiency below 80% with ESS no higher than 10 subtracts one step. When the current window is more than two steps above the rounded candidate and ISI is at least 15, one step is added to the rounded candidate.

The result is clamped between the minimum and a ceiling. That ceiling is the largest of minimum plus one step and the smallest of 10 hours, sleep need plus 90 minutes, or current window plus four steps. Comparison rows include the candidate plus current-window offsets from minus two to plus two steps. Duplicate rows are removed.

Limitations and Safety Notes:

The output is informational and cannot diagnose or treat insomnia, sleep apnea, excessive sleepiness, or another disorder. Questionnaire totals may be affected by scoring errors, licensing conditions, population differences, and the period being recalled.

Do not use a candidate time-in-bed window as unsupervised sleep restriction.
Do not drive or continue safety-critical work when dangerously sleepy.
Seek qualified advice for breathing pauses, severe sleepiness, shift-work complexity, bipolar-spectrum risk, seizures, parasomnias, pregnancy, major medical illness, or medication effects.
Use urgent local services when there is immediate danger.

Worked Examples:

Diary evidence leads the review

An ISI of 16, PSQI of 9, ESS of 8, DBAS-16 mean of 4.2, eight-hour need, 6.4-hour average sleep, 83% diary efficiency, 07:00 wake target, and 7.5-hour current window produces a CBT-I diary route. Weekly shortfall is 11.2 hours. With a 15-minute step and no selected safety caution, the review candidate is 6.75 hours with a 00:15 bedtime label and 94.8% projected efficiency. Those figures describe the heuristic; the appropriate action is to verify the diary and seek qualified CBT-I review rather than adopt the candidate automatically.

References:

VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for Chronic Insomnia Disorder and Obstructive Sleep Apnea, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense, 2025.
Healthy Sleep Habits, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 2022.
The Insomnia Severity Index: Psychometric Indicators to Detect Insomnia Cases and Evaluate Treatment Response, SLEEP, 2011.
The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, University of Pittsburgh Center for Sleep and Circadian Science.
About the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Epworth Sleepiness Scale.
Examining Maladaptive Beliefs About Sleep Across Insomnia Patient Groups, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 2010.