Your alertness is not flat. It rises after waking, peaks, sags in the early afternoon, climbs again, then winds down toward sleep. The Energy Schedule draws that curve for today, hour by hour, so you can put the right work in the right window instead of fighting your own biology. It is part of Helix Pro.
Anchored to your actual wake time
Most circadian advice assumes everyone wakes at the same time. Helix does not. The curve is anchored to the moment you actually woke this morning, read from your sleep-anchored day, not to a fixed clock. Sleep in an hour and the whole shape shifts an hour later with you: your peaks, your dip, your wind-down and your ideal bedtime all move together. A 6am riser and a 9am riser get genuinely different schedules from the same model.
The shape of the day
| Phase | What it feels like | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Morning peak | Alertness climbing to its first high | Hard training, deep work, decisions that matter |
| Midday dip | The natural early-afternoon sag | Meetings, admin, easy movement, a short nap |
| Afternoon peak | The second wind | A second session, focused work, skill practice |
| Wind-down | Energy tapering toward sleep | Light tasks, routines, screens off |
| Ideal bedtime | Where tonight’s sleep wants to start | Protecting tomorrow’s curve |
What moves the curve
The schedule is not a static template. It adjusts to what your body is carrying today:
- Recovery state. A poor recovery score flattens the peaks; a green morning sharpens them.
- Sleep debt. Accumulated sleep debt deepens the midday dip and pulls the ideal bedtime earlier.
- Workouts. A hard session takes a bite out of the hours that follow it, so the curve reflects the afternoon you will actually have, not the one the textbook promises.
- Naps. A logged nap partially refills the tank and reshapes the rest of the day.
How to use it
Treat the curve as a scheduling tool, not a horoscope. Put the things that demand the most of you, hard intervals, heavy lifts, deep creative work, on the peaks. Push meetings, email and admin into the dip, where they cost you the least. And when the wind-down starts, stop trying to summon a third peak with caffeine; that loan gets repaid from tonight’s sleep, which shapes tomorrow’s curve.
If your mornings consistently feel worse than the curve says they should, that is a question worth putting to the AI coach, which can read the same numbers and tell you what is driving them.