Morning lark or night owl? The chronotype quiz

Most “are you a morning person” quizzes ask how you feel about mornings. Sleep researchers ask something duller and much more telling: when do you actually sleep when nobody sets an alarm? Fill in a normal week.

How it works

The quiz uses the method behind the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire, described in a 2019 review by the researchers who developed it. Your chronotype is the midpoint of your sleep on free days, the nights your body gets to choose. Because most people catch up on sleep at the weekend, that midpoint is corrected when free-day sleep is longer than workday sleep: half of the extra sleep is taken off. The questions here are our own wording; the calculation follows the published equations.

Social jetlag is the gap between your mid-sleep on workdays and on free days. The term comes from a 2006 study of 501 people, which found the gap was largest in people whose natural schedule runs late.

What it cannot tell you

The animal names and the bands behind them are ours, a rule of thumb for reading your mid-sleep time; the researchers use the time itself, not categories. The method assumes a regular work schedule, so it does not work for shift work, and the review points out that it struggles with very flexible schedules too. One week is a snapshot: travel, illness or a new baby will move the numbers. If you sleep badly whatever your schedule, talk to a doctor. Your individual answers stay in your browser; with your consent, the site only counts which result comes up.