Habit: Taking naps
Experience: Over the long weekend (1/13-3/13), everytime I felt the need to take a nap, I noted down the current time, my bedtime for the previous night, number of hours I spent sleeping the night before, the time that I woke up, and whether or not I chose to take a nap in that moment. If I did choose to take a nap, then I noted down the length of the nap, if I felt refreshed, and what time I woke up. Then, at the end of each day, I noted down how tired I felt prior to bed, what time I went to bed and how long it took me to fall asleep. Something that I noticed was that because the activity made me more aware of the fact that I was tracking how many naps I took, I only ended up taking 3 short naps—one on Friday (1/13) for 45 mins, one on Saturday (1/14) for 30 mins, and one on Monday (1/16) for 30 mins, as supposed to taking 1 longer (1+ hr) nap or multiple 15 minute naps throughout the day. I also noticed that I was incentivized to go to bed early so that I would not have to feel tired the next day and be tempted to take a nap. Because of this, I also ended up drinking less coffee except for Sunday, and that day I ended up sleeping much later than normal and getting less than 8 hours of sleep, increasing the temptation to nap on Monday by a good amount.
What would I change: I would like to try and do this over a longer period of time, because I think it took 2-3 days for me to even realize what kind of data I wanted to be recording, so some of it had to be filled in in hindsight. I also think I would like to try and be more consistent over the course of the experiment, especially because I noticed how much the drinking coffee affected my temptation to nap the next day.
Models:
