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Chronotype quiz

Find out which hours your body is actually for

Five questions from the rMEQ, the validated questionnaire researchers use, scored the way they score it. No animals, no invented categories, and nothing is sent anywhere.

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  1. 1.If you were entirely free to plan your day, what time would you get up?
  2. 2.In the first half hour after waking, how tired do you feel?
  3. 3.What time in the evening do you feel tired and in need of sleep?
  4. 4.At what time of day do you feel your best?
  5. 5.Do you consider yourself a morning type or an evening type?

Answer all five and your result appears here. There are no wrong answers, and nothing is sent anywhere: the scoring runs in your browser.

Where the questions come from

A real instrument, not five questions somebody made up

The five questions above are the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, published by Adan and Almirall in 1991 as a short form of Horne and Ostberg's nineteen-item MEQ from 1976. It is the standard self-report measure of morningness in sleep research, it has been validated against body temperature and melatonin timing, and it takes about a minute.

The scoring is deliberately lopsided. Three items score one to five, one scores one to four, and the last scores 6, 4, 2 or 0, which is what makes the total run from 4 to 25 rather than from 5 to 25. Nudging any of that produces a quiz that looks identical and measures something nobody has checked, so none of it is adjusted here.

One thing worth knowing: the three-band split used above is the rMEQ's own. The five-band version people sometimes quote, with definite and moderate types, belongs to the full nineteen-item questionnaire and does not transfer to a five-item score.

What a self-report can and cannot tell you

The rMEQ asks how you experience your own day, which is a good proxy for where your clock sits and is not a measurement of it. The measured version is mid-sleep timing on days when nothing is forcing you out of bed, and the gap between the two has a name: social jetlag, the distance between the schedule your body wants and the one your week gives it.

Tock computes both. It asks these same five questions when you set it up, and once it has recorded enough nights it works out your mid-sleep timing from what you actually did, so you can see whether your answers and your nights agree.

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Questions

What people ask about chronotypes

What is a chronotype?

Your chronotype is where your body clock naturally sits: whether you are wired to wake early and fade in the evening, to come alive at night, or to land somewhere in the middle. It is largely genetic, it shifts with age, and it is the reason two people on the same schedule can find the same alarm easy and unbearable.

What is the rMEQ?

The reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire is a five-item version of the 1976 questionnaire by Horne and Ostberg, published by Adan and Almirall in 1991. It scores from 4 to 25, where higher means more of a morning person, and it is the instrument used here and inside the Tock app.

How is the score worked out?

Each of the five answers carries a point value. Four of the items score up to five points and the last one scores 6, 4, 2 or 0, which is what makes the total range exactly 4 to 25. A total of 4 to 11 is an evening type, 12 to 17 is neither, and 18 to 25 is a morning type. Those bands are the validated ones and are not adjusted here.

Can you change your chronotype?

You can shift it, within limits. Bright light soon after waking pulls your clock earlier and light late in the evening pushes it later, so a consistent wake time and a dim last hour before bed move it in the direction you want. What you cannot do is decide to be a morning person and have your body agree by Monday.

Is this quiz a diagnosis?

No. The rMEQ is a self-report questionnaire about how you experience your own day, which is useful and is not a medical assessment. If your sleep is genuinely not working, or you suspect a circadian rhythm disorder, that is a conversation for a doctor rather than a quiz.

Does Tock use my chronotype for anything?

Yes. Tock asks the same five questions during onboarding and uses the result to frame your sleep plan, and it separately estimates your chronotype from your own recorded sleep timing once it has enough nights, so you can see whether what you answered and what you actually do agree.

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