Sleep is right up there on the list with time when it comes to things that business owners and key stakeholders wish they had more of. When you travel for business, you’re already putting extra strain on your body. That’s on top of the busy lifestyles that people lead today, and then you have to factor in things like time changes, sleep lost due to an upset body clock, and more—it's not hard to find yourself exhausted after being on the go for so long. 

The weary business traveler isn’t going to be as productive as they could be, either, which is a double whammy—you can’t be successful without the travel, but you can’t travel without exhausting yourself. You might be able to keep up with things for a while, but eventually, your productivity will begin to suffer. 

Thanks to modern technology, you’re just a few clicks away from rectifying the situation entirely. Today's app market includes a host of sleep tracking apps and sleep helpers that are designed to assist people in sleeping better, getting more sleep, and thereby increasing their productivity during their waking hours as a result. In the list below, we’ll go through the best of them, including the features they offer, whether they’re free or paid, and other details, so that you can decide what’s right for you. 

The numbers don’t lie: we need sleep

Research has shown that there are seriously detrimental effects that come from not getting enough sleep. In 4,188 workers studied, it was discovered that their performance, productivity, and safety habits were “significantly worse” than those who slept properly. That was estimated to create as much as $1,967 in productivity loss per worker. 

Ironically, the leading cause of poor sleep is—you guessed it—overworking. 

When you’re working too much, you’re not sleeping enough. When you don’t have downtime, your brain is constantly “up”, and it can’t relax. That can affect your productivity, your day-to-day business efficiency, and even your bottom line. Unless you’re in the business of throwing money away, it’s time to do something. 

Of course, people have known for years that sleep is necessary to improving productivity because it gives people a sense of health and wellbeing. Not sleeping enough causes the body to be fatigued and the brain to be slower because it hasn’t had enough time to reset. We’re working too much, so we’re losing sleep. But we’re losing sleep, so we’re not actually getting that much work done—just wasting more precious hours.

You’d think by now with all of the research that everyone would be trying to fix the problem. And yet, very few actually are. If you’re of the smart ones that understand that your sleep is critical to your business success, welcome. You’ll find plenty of tips, insight, and educational resources out there to help you improve your sleep, but let’s take a look at sleep tracking apps and what they can do. 

If you want to guarantee that you rest easy at night, enlist the 24/7 call answering and live chat from the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai and trust that you can get the sleep you desperately need while we tend to your customers so that your business never sleeps. 

Sleepyti.me

This is a simple app that makes sleep tracking a breeze. If you are just looking to monitor your habits and maybe make some improvements, this app can do the job. It can calculate when you need to go to sleep if you want to get up at a certain hour, and what time to set an alarm so that you maximize your sleep. It does this based on the REM cycle and the time that you go to sleep. 

Sleepyti.me will ensure that you’re woken during the lightest stage of sleep so there is less disruption to the REM cycle that leads to that groggy feeling. It doesn’t have a lot of features and extras to note, but the fact that it’s a free, browser-based tool that’s easy to use makes it a good choice for all. 

Sleepbot

Sleepbot is another free sleep tracking tool that will track everything from sleep quality to what’s going on while you sleep. It will even set the alarms to wake you at the best point in your REM cycles, and it will turn your phone on airplane mode and mute your notifications so that nothing disturbs you while you rest. The mobile app is available on iOS and Android, and it offers impressive data that even lets you listen to the sounds that are happening while you sleep. 

Sleepbot even comes with some ambient music that can help you relax and sleep more soundly. There is AI in the alarm that allows it to learn your behavior, sleep patterns, and more so that it can adjust the alarms accordingly. You can even set custom sounds to your preference and enjoy monitoring of all kinds of sleep insights to improve your sleep. 

Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle is one of the leading apps on the market today, thanks to the fact that it’s super-intuitive and it offers plenty of useful data about your sleep. It can track quality, time of sleep, REM analysis, when you wake, how often you wake, and so forth. You can even benefit from the weekly and monthly pattern reports that it generates to help you better understand how you might be able to improve your sleep. 

Sleep Cycle even has a new functionality to detect snoring and there’s even a patent on the sleep tracking technology used and it can help improve your sleep no matter where you go, thanks to its availability as an app for both iOS and Android. It's not free, but for just $0.99, you can start getting a better handle on your sleep so that you can get back to business. 

Sleep Score

Sleep Score is a top sleep tracking app that gives you the chance to set your own goals and track different features to help you figure out how you’re sleeping and where improvements can be made. This tool is based on research and scientific methods, and it has its own “sleep score” that is measured using six parameters, allowing the app to provide custom recommendations for sleep improvement. 

Sleep Score is smart enough to know that there is more than one person in the bed and tracks for the right sleeper. It also offers a host of accessories that you can invest in to analyze the sounds and lights of your room that might be impacting your sleep. It’s a great way to gain valuable insights from structured data so that you can sleep better, no matter where in the world your business takes you. 

MotionX 24/7

This sleep optimization app provides all the basic functions that you’d expect: sleep tracking, waking up, body movements, and so forth. It also measures your heart rate and allows you to set an alarm when your sleep quality isn’t great so that you will wake up only once you’re fully rested. This app is great for tracking naps, too, and you can integrate all the data for a better picture of how you’re sleeping. 

MotionX 24/7 helps improve your sleep and monitors your health at the same time. It also allows you to look at graphs, printed reports, and other details to learn how you are sleeping and what you can do to sleep better. It’s available for iOS and can be installed on any device that’s running later than iOS 7. It’s just $0.99, and it’s going to change the way you think about your sleep. 

Sleep Genius

If you want to sleep like an astronaut (ok, maybe that’s a little “far out”), this app that’s endorsed by NASA is a great choice. Sleep Genius was designed by those in sleep, neuroscience, and music to bring a tool that helps track sleep and improve your relaxation so that you can sleep more soundly and get more restful sleep. You can set routines based on your preferences and even use the relaxation programs to unwind. 

There’s a power nap feature on the app, and it is claimed to be one of the most advanced sleep tracking tools on the market today. It is migrating into IoT development, helping to deliver devices that can improve the environment that you sleep in, too. Reports and charts will help you understand how you’re sleeping. The app is available for iOS and Android and can be downloaded for free. 

Pillow

Pillow is another sleep tracking app that was born of the IoT. It can track, record, and monitor all aspects of your sleep automatically. You don’t have to set any alarms, mess with settings, or even deal with setup. Just wear an Apple Watch to bed and it’ll take care of the rest. For those who love wearables, this app is a great choice. It can monitor your heart rate and record audio, too, 

Pillow provides a complete insight into your sleep cycles and provides impressive visualization charts to help you see exactly what’s going on. This kind of accessibility and insight will make it easy to improve your sleep patterns, and the hassle-free nature of the app is one feature that people love. You're probably already wearing your Apple watch anyway, so just download the app and start sleeping better. 

Sleep Tracker

If you’re looking for an app that tracks more than sleep, this one could be what you need. It's designed specifically for those people who think a good night’s sleep is impacted by the rest of your day. It can keep up with what you eat, your moods, your productivity, and more. There's a Mood Diary that syncs to the cloud and you can make entries for weight, calories, to-do list, and more. 

Sleep Tracker can also track your sleep, of course, and help you establish better sleep routines and habits. It can tell you when you’re sleeping best, what might be affecting your sleep, and more. It also offers the ability to read the results to you in eight different languages, and more. If you’re looking for an app that improves your sleep by tracking all of your life, this is it. Plus, it’s available free if you just want the basic features. 

Better sleep means better productivity—so does better partnerships

Whether you’re just a weary business traveler looking for better sleep solutions or a small business owner trying to find solutions to help your entire team, the apps on this list will be sure to help improve your sleep in several different ways. As a small business or solopreneur, it can be hard to feel like you’ve even got time to sleep, let alone to get anything of quality. Thanks to modern sleep tracking apps, though, that no longer has to be the case. 

Whether you’re heading to Tokyo for a business meeting or just flying to New York from LA and want to make sure you’re not jetlagged, or even if you just know that your busy life as a business owner is dragging you down, you can count on these apps to help you figure out what is going wrong and how you can make things better. Check out the basic apps, as well as the ones that include premium features like health monitoring, mood tracking, and other tools to help you improve your sleep for better productivity and a better life overall. 

You can schedule your consultation now to find out how the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can take care of 24/7 customer needs via live chat and call answering, as well as several other mission-critical services for your business, all while you rest your head and get ready for the next big day. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.