The behavior I want to change is having an inconsistent sleep schedule. I often go to sleep and wake up at very abnormal hours (e.g. sleeping at 8am and waking up at 4pm), which has consistently been a problem for the past 4 years. I measured my behavior for 3.5 days, 1/13 (after Friday’s class ended)-1/16.
Log / Experience
After class ended on Friday 1/13, I started tracking my behavior. I was in other classes until 3pm, but afterwards, I went back to my dorm and worked on psets until 6:30pm, and then got food from the dining hall. After eating, I planned to spend until 12am making choreography since I had to present some at dance practice the next day, but I sat and did nothing until 10pm and then kept ending up distracted on tiktok/youtube when I was trying to make the choreo. I ended up finishing/going to sleep at 6am.
On Saturday 1/14, I woke up at 9:45am to go to dance practice, but I was incredibly tired during it since I stayed up so late and was exhausted by the end of practice. Since I was so tired and knew I wouldn’t be able to focus if I did work, I decided to take a nap at 2pm, but decided not to set an alarm. I figured I would sleep 4 hours at most, but I definitely underestimated how tired I was and ended up sleeping through the entire rest of the day, only fully waking up again at 5am on Sunday.
When I woke up on Sunday 1/15, it hit me that I needed to watch a lot of lectures/do a lot of readings/finish many assignments by 8pm that day, which I had planned to start after my “short nap” on Saturday. However, even though I knew all the work I had to do, I couldn’t motivate myself to do any of it until 10am, when the panic started settling in. I worked from 10am to 7:30pm, unfortunately skipping lunch. While working, I occasionally got distracted and went on my phone or just sat and did nothing because I was tired from waking up at 5am and working for so long. After I turned everything in, I got dinner, hung out with some friends, then went on instagram/tiktok/played video games from 10pm to 1am because I felt I deserved a break for working for so long. I ended up sleeping at 2am.
I woke up on Monday 1/16 at 11:30am to get lunch and meet with my cs 124 assignment partner at 12pm. We worked on the assignment for 4 hours, after which I went and hung out with my friends for 2 hours. I then ate dinner and tried working on some other psets, but because I was so exhausted from working the day before, I barely got anything done. I got a call at 11pm from my friends to go out to eat at Pocha K (amazing place btw), which I agreed to, and I ended up not getting home until 2am. After trying (and failing) to do more work, I got ready for bed and ended up falling asleep at 4am.
(Also, every day I woke up for about an hour at 8am because of my neighbor’s alarm.)
Models
Overall, I’ve realized a lot while making these models. The connection circle helped me really visualize the terrible feedback loops that cause my inconsistent sleeping habits, and though there are some factors I can’t control (like my neighbor), there is a lot that I can do to start breaking this habit. A good place to start is probably addressing my procrastination habits. I also realized from this project that if there’s no external factor motivating me to wake up, like meeting up with someone, I usually won’t.
Measuring this habit throughout these few days has also helped me reflect on why I find it so hard to break this habit. I think I’ve been too used to this type of schedule for too long, and since it hasn’t caused me extreme problems yet, I feel that it is okay to keep doing what I’ve been doing. With having a required class at 9:30am now though, this schedule is starting to fall apart and I’ve realized it’s something I need to fix badly.
What I’d do differently next time
Next time I do this, I would want to track this behavior over the course of a couple of weeks because I feel like my inconsistency has patterns throughout the week. Also, since I’ve realized much of my bad sleeping habits are a result of my procrastination habits, I would want to track that habit more closely in conjunction with my sleeping habits.
