My Behavior
For Measuring Me Part 2, I sought to change a behavior that I observed during the first assignment: waking up and checking my phone (instead of getting out of bed). From Measuring Me #1, I noticed that I spend at least 15 minutes on my phone in the morning. This behavior, although seemingly minimal, had a large impact on my day: I woke up feeling more drowsy, felt less productive in the morning, and overall felt like I was in a worse mood due to my lack of productivity.
My Methods
In order to have my Measuring accurately reflect my behavior, I tried my best to ignore the fact that I was tracking this behavior. I wanted to track an accurate few days of my behavior, perhaps trying a few tactics to add friction to my usual routine, but overall keeping my life relatively the same. As a result, I recorded my behavior later in the day to keep myself from overly-focusing on the behavior.
My Results
Day 1: Thursday, January 11th
- At Stanford dorm
- Didn’t have anything scheduled for the morning à spent around 15 minutes on phone
- Went to bed early the night before
Day 2: Friday, January 12th
- At Stanford dorm
- Scheduled a coffee with a friend for 11 AM but still had to pack for my trip à woke up and got out of bed immediately
- Unique behavior: Strict schedule that had been planned the night before
Day 3: Saturday, January 13th
- In Lake Tahoe
- Had to rent skis early with a group of 7 friends à woke up and got out of bed immediately
- Only outlet was far away from my bed
Day 4: Sunday, January 14th
- In Lake Tahoe
- Friends wanted to get to the mountain early à spent a bit of time on phone but got out of bed almost immediately
- Only outlet was far away from my bed
My Models
Model #1:
I color coded the factors in my connection circle based on the extent that I had power to change them. Green represents behaviors that were self-inflicted, or those that were entirely up to me and my independent decision-making. Purple illustrated factors that were out of my control and created by my external environment. Blue represented a hybrid factor between these two extremes, as the factor was both influenced by my own decisions, but also external factors that were out of my control. I was surprised to find that, with the exception of one factor, I had a high level of control in affecting the factors that negatively or positively impacted my ability to wake up and get out of bed without checking my phone. Additionally, I realized that a lot of the factors concerned aspects of my schedule (waking up late/early, obligations in the morning) or my environment (where my phone was placed, waking up cold).
Before this assignment, I thought that my getting out of bed was merely a function of my willpower and mental strength that day to be disciplined with myself. What I realized through building my connection circle was that I can set my environment and schedule to be more conducive to building this habit, especially by creating friction that acts as a resisting or driving force.
Model #2:
I also created two more models, one reinforcing feedback loop and one balancing feedback loop. These were built off of the connection circle. For the reinforcing loop, I wanted to hone in on the discovery that my morning schedule positively impacted the likelihood that I would wake up without checking my phone. If I planned an early morning activity, I was much less likely to wake up without checking my phone due to the time pressure I felt. Additionally, if I woke up without checking my phone, I was much more likely to engage in a productive activity like going for a walk, going to the library early, or going to the gym.
My Experience/Conclusions
Overall, my experience was very positive. Measuring a specific behavior felt a lot more manageable than measuring 15 minute increments. Additionally, through my models I was able to discover tangible factors that I could alter in order to break my negative habit, specifically in my environment and my schedule. I also realized that I shouldn’t beat myself up too much about the fact that found this behavior difficult to break, as I was not setting myself up to win. I realized that a combination of “self-inflicted” and hybrid factors could create the best chances of me breaking this habit, as I required both environmental and peer-pressure pushes to execute the behavior effectively.
