We spend a third of our lives either asleep or trying to sleep; for most of us, that’s more time than we spend on any other activity, including going to work. Yet we hardly ever talk about – or even think about – our sleep. Unless, that is, it becomes a problem. So, what does your sleep say about you? To find out, score the following statements where 1 = not at all; 2 = once a week; 3 = twice a week; 4 = three or more times a week.

In the last month have you had sleep trouble because of…
(a) taking more than half an hour to get to sleep
(b) waking up in the middle of the night, or too early in the morning
(c) not feeling well rested when you wake up
(d) feeling tired throughout the day

Take the average across a-d to find your total score. What is interesting here is not so much your absolute score, but how you compare to other people. Since few of us get as much sleep as we would like, we tend to think that everyone else is doing better sleepwise than we are. In fact, if you scored around the 2.5 mark, you are sleeping about as well as the average person, at least according to a new study conducted at the University of Alabama. This study found that the people who were most likely to seek treatment were not necessarily those with the worst sleep problems, but those with unrealistic expectations about how infrequently others experience problems. So, while, in our hectic modern world, we could probably all do with a bit more sleep, don’t lie awake thinking everyone else sleeps like a baby.

Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? by Ben Ambridge (Profile, £12.99), or £11.04 from bookshop.theguardian.com