Know Thyselfby Silenos Works

Traits & Temperament

Chronotype

Lark, owl or something in between?

  • About 4 minutes
  • 25 questions
  • 3 dimensions
  • 5 illustrated results
Begin the test →See all 5 results

Free, no account needed.

Illustration: Chronotype

Your chronotype is the timing your body clock prefers: when you naturally wake, peak, fade and fall asleep. This test also looks at how flexible your rhythm is and how soundly you sleep, and matches you with one of five birds of the day and night.

For questions about times, think of an ordinary stretch of your life rather than a holiday or an exceptional week, and answer for what you would naturally do if your time were your own, unless the question asks about days when you have to be up at a set time.

What it measures

Chronotype

Morning ↔ Evening

Where in the day your body clock naturally places alertness, peak performance and sleepiness.

Morning: Your clock runs early: you wake readily, peak before noon and fade in the evening.

Evening: Your clock runs late: mornings are slow, and your energy and focus rise as the day goes on.

Rhythm flexibility

Fixed ↔ Flexible

How easily your rhythm bends: coping with late nights, early starts, time-zone changes and irregular hours.

Fixed: Your rhythm likes regularity: a late night or a clock change costs you, and you function best on a fixed schedule.

Flexible: Your rhythm bends easily: you can sleep and function at unusual hours and bounce back from schedule changes.

Sleep depth

Light sleeper ↔ Deep sleeper

How readily you fall asleep and how soundly you stay asleep.

Light sleeper: Your sleep is light and easily disturbed: noises, thoughts or small changes can keep you awake or wake you up.

Deep sleeper: You fall asleep easily and sleep soundly; once you are out, little disturbs you.

Possible results

About this test

Almost every cell in your body keeps time on a circadian clock of roughly twenty-four hours, kept in step with the day mainly by light. People differ in how that clock is set: some run early, some late, and most sit somewhere in between. In 1976 James Horne and Olov Östberg published the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, which asks when you would choose to sleep, work and exercise if you were free to decide. In 2003 Till Roenneberg and colleagues introduced the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire, which asks instead for actual sleep times on workdays and free days; the gap between the two later became known as social jet lag. Research on shift workers, beginning with a 1979 questionnaire by Simon Folkard and colleagues that later became the Circadian Type Inventory, added a second question: how flexibly your rhythm copes with irregular hours.

Chronotype is partly inherited and shifts with age: it is latest around the end of adolescence and drifts earlier in later life. Light timing can nudge it, but only modestly. This test uses original questions in the spirit of those instruments: choices about preferred times, scored on the morning-evening axis, plus statements about rhythm flexibility and sleep depth. Your bird is the profile nearest to yours, with the morning-evening axis counting most.

Caveats: the result rests on self-report and has no population norms, so it describes your preferences rather than measuring your clock. The advice is general sleep-hygiene guidance, not medical advice. If you have persistent trouble sleeping, exhausting days, loud snoring or pauses in breathing at night, talk to a doctor.

References

For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.

Chronotype

Begin the test →

About 4 minutes · 25 questions

More tests in this area