Measuring Me Part 2

The behavior that I chose to track is my sleep. This is something that I’ve been struggling with for a few years and has progressively gotten worse, where I sleep really late each night and usually don’t get enough sleep. It makes a significant impact on my day-to-day energy and wellness levels, so I’ve really been trying to fix it this year. To be more specific about this habit, while I don’t have an exact sleep schedule since my schedule changes often, I am aiming to sleep 8 hours a night and try to sleep by 1 AM each night. This is an effort I’ve been trying to make since winter break, but as the logs below show, it gets overridden almost every night. I wanted to better understand exactly why I’m having such a hard time fixing my sleep schedule. Tracking my sleep schedule was fairly easy; I tracked the time I went to sleep, the time I woke up, why I woke up and slept at those times (events in the morning, the last things I did at night), and how I felt each day. I tracked my behavior over four nights: Thursday through Sunday nights. I wanted to understand exactly when I was sleeping and why I was sleeping at those times (primarily asking the question: what are my habits before sleeping?). Here are my logs below:

• Thursday
  • Sleep: 2AM
    • Finished all urgent assignments for the week, spent 2 hours on self-care and cleaning my room
    • Was struggling to sleep, so I took melatonin at 1:30AM, and this forced me to go to sleep by 2AM to make sure the melatonin is effective
• Friday
  • Wake Up: 10 AM
    • Had class at 11 AM, so woke up an hour in advance to get ready for it
  • Sleep: 2AM
    • Went to hang out with friends until about 12 AM
    • Got ready for bed by 1 AM
    • Scrolled for one hour
• Saturday
  • Wake Up: 11 AM
    • Didn’t set an alarm – nothing to do and was tired from the week
  • Sleep: 5 AM
    • • Planned to go to bed at 12 AM
      • Read and scrolled on my phone until 5 AM – didn’t realize how much time had passed
• Sunday
  • Wake Up: 10 AM
    • Had a lot of assignments to do and wanted a headstart on my day still since I like the mornings
  • Sleep: 3:30 AM
    • Had an interview the next morning, tried to sleep at 12 AM, but couldn’t fall asleep due to stress
    • Tried to not scroll, but needed to distract myself from the anxiety
• Monday
• • Wake Up: 7:30 AM
    • Had an interview at 8 AM that I had to get up and prepare for

To summarize, I slept 8 hours on Thursday night, 9 hours on Friday night, 5 hours on Saturday night, and 4 hours on Sunday night. I did not meet my goal of sleeping by 1 AM on any of the nights but I did meet my goal of 8 hours the first two nights. The second two nights are indicative of how my weekday nights usually look.

In terms of key insights that I found, first of all, I noticed that it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to get ready for bed and unwind. I need to spend some amount of time in bed, trying to relax in some way before I go to sleep. I usually just reach for my phone and I either read or scroll on social media (or do both). The second thing I noticed is that this time on my phone (in general, not just in bed) can really get away from me. Saturday night is a real example of just that. Third, I noticed that I felt so much better at the beginning of the weekend (Friday and Saturday) as I had no particular deadlines and was getting adequate sleep. However, the moment that Sunday hit, I realized just how much work I had to get done for the week and the stress was back. Whenever I’m stressed about assignments, I always have a hard time going to bed on time and would rather spend that time trying to do work or thinking about doing that work. Since I’m a procrastinator, this is something that manifests here as well. I didn’t realize how much of an impact this had on my sleep schedule and my week. I got a couple of small assignments done on Saturday, and even that helped reduce my stress by so much. It is also helping me go to sleep slightly earlier tonight than I would have. For me, the weekend is a time to reset and set up my intentions and plan for the week. I need to make sure that I do a good job early on in the week to carry it through. Fourth, I found that in my calendar, the times I set up for sleep are negotiable. I schedule things in my calendar, some of which get moved and some of which don’t (non-negotiables). Sleep should ideally become a non-negotiable. I set up a time that I want to sleep at for a particular day and when that time comes around, if I deem anything more important or I get absorbed on my phone, I am more than happy to ignore that bedtime. I realized one part of it is a result of when I miss my sleep deadline and it takes me a little longer to do something beforehand, I almost have the mentality of now that I’m late, it doesn’t matter how late I sleep. I need to be more flexible with my scheduling and be more lenient with myself so I can slowly improve my habits.

Going forward, I have some changes that I want to make that I think can help me fix my sleeping habits. For one, I want to try to read a physical book before bed instead of scrolling on my phone. I find that usually tires me out more and doesn’t have the added social media that can get me stuck on my phone. Second of all, I need to start getting ready for bed well in advance of when I want to sleep so I can meet my goals. Third of all, to avoid feeling like I’m missing my bedtime, I think I need to put in realistic bedtimes in my calendar and make sure that I schedule out ample time to get ready for bed beforehand, so if this goes over, I don’t feel stressed. Part of this might mean getting ready for bed earlier in the evening so I’m not rushing at the end of the night. I would also like to give myself enough time to unwind, meaning I don’t want to feel rushed in the evenings. I think a big part of this might have to do with getting my work done during the day, so I’m not rushing to complete it at night (procrastination). Fourth of all, I want to address this procrastination. I realized that doing work over the weekends can help me feel a lot less stressed and not force me to do work at night during the week. Trying to do a bit more work over the weekends might help me sleep earlier. Additionally, on weekdays when I feel like I don’t have much work to do, it might help if I don’t procrastinate and do some of the upcoming work to reduce my stress. Last but not least, I think it’s important for me to somehow try and create a daily routine where I sleep and wake up at the same time every day (including the weekends). Trying to figure out last minute when to sleep and wake up has made it so I don’t prioritize sleep, and I don’t want that to be the case.

I created a connection circle with different factors that led to my sleeping habits. The ones in green emphasize causes and correlations that led to good sleeping habits and got me closer to my goal. The red connections are habits that led me to have poorer sleeping habits and got me further away from my goal (I clearly have a lot more of those).

I also created a feedback loop from what I learned. I found that I mostly stay up doing work because I feel behind (which is likely a result of procrastination). The feedback loop emphasizes how when I don’t do enough work on the weekends, it feeds into the cycle for the week where I don’t have enough time to finish my work and end up sleeping late. I also continue to sleep late and wake up late, which makes it difficult for me to sleep early during the week as well. Overall, this feedback loop allowed me to see the importance of my weekend habits and weekly reset to set myself up for success during the week.