The habit I wanted to track and improve on was waking up at 8am every morning. I tracked my behavior during two night-to-morning intervals.
This past thursday night, I tried to practice good sleep hygiene by drinking non-caffeinated “sleep tea” and changing all my devices to night shift mode (to block the blue light). I also made sure to turn off big lights in my room to signal to my body that it is time to sleep. However, because I am not used to sleeping at 12am, I was not tired by then. So, I fell for the tiktok trap and started scrolling through, hoping that watching news videos would bore me to sleep. Since looking at my screen seemed to only stimulate my eyes and make me feel more awake, I decided to just listen to the news and close my eyes. Unfortunately, I was still overly stimulated, so I turned off my phone and fell asleep right after.
Weirdly, I woke up at 7am, but I did not feel fully rested. I believe I took a 2 hour nap in the afternoon.
On Saturday night, I couldn’t do my nightly sleep routine, but I was pretty tired by 12am. However, I still watched tik toks before I slept; I think watching tik toks is my way of winding down (or it’s just a bad habit I have, so I feel like my night isn’t complete if I don’t watch a few videos). Therefore, I couldn’t wake up to my 8am alarm and woke up at 9am, still feeling very tired.
After drawing my connection circle map, I noticed there was a cycle that always ended up with me not feeling very sleepy at 12am. Even though I turn on night shift or drink sleep tea, I always look at my phone in bed. My eyes and brain because stimulated, so it is really hard to fall asleep. Therefore, I sleep after my goal time and also wake up feeling less rested. I think sleeping with my phone right under my pillow is not the best routine because my sleep gets interrupted by late-night notifications as well. Then, I drew up a feedback loop to further examine how my phone affects my sleep. It seems like because I wake up after 9am, I don’t feel sleepy by 12am. Then, because I am bored and awake in bed, I am drawn to watch videos before I sleep. However, looking at my phone only stimulates my mind further, keeping me awake until I realize I have to put it away. Because I am already in bed, I leave my phone under my pillow, which also adds to my bad sleep quality. Therefore, I wake up after 9am again.
Next time, I will try to make a deal with myself and leave my phone on my desk. Even if it’s tough to fall asleep by 12am, hopefully, I can start my night routine earlier and be in bed earlier. This gives me more time to try to fall asleep and have better quality sleep; this will hopefully help me reach my goal of changing my sleep schedule and waking up at or before 8am every morning.
Log:
Thursday night:
- 9pm: Drinking ginger/lemon tea (no caffeine), and finishing up some homework (turning on night shift for my devices.
- 9:30pm: more work
- 10pm: shower
- 10:30pm: more work
- 11pm: more work
- 11:30pm: washed up for sleep, turn off overhead light (only lamps are on), set alarm for 8am
- 12:00am: stretch and watch tik toks
- 12:30am: listen to podcast to try to sleep
- 1:00am: fall asleep after I finally shut down phone because the podcast wasn’t helping
Friday morning
- 6:50am: wakeup randomly
- 7:00am: look at phone
- 7:30am: look at phone
- 7:45am: get out of bed, brush teeth
- 8:00am: drink water
- 8:15am: get coffee
Saturday night:
- 9pm: at birthday party, talking with friends
- 9:30pm: eating snacks, talking with friends
- 10pm: walking to the car in the rain
- 10:30pm: driving from sf to stanford
- 11pm: walking from parking lot to my dorm in the rain
- 11:30pm: arrived back home, drinking water
- 12:00am: washed up, getting ready for sleep
- 12:30am: watched tik toks until finally falling asleep
Saturday morning:
- 8:20am: snoozed alarm
- 8:45am: woke up
- 9:00am: got out of bed (very tired)
- 9:30am: washed up, making a shaken espresso
- 10am: doing some work on my computer
Diagrams:
