Many years ago I purchased a Fitbit. I really had no interest in exercise. I was not trying to "get fit" and had little interest in changing my physical routine. My main concern was tracking my sleep. I was working a night job and would get home between 1:30 and 2:00 AM. Having a moderately physical job may make me feel tired, but I still felt mentally awake. In the past I've have referred to myself as a night owl. I don't really know how to explain it, but I just feel more alert at night. Maybe it was just the world slowing down for a while causing a brief respite from the seemingly constant clatter, giving me the space to think. In any case, I often wouldn't get into bed until near 5. I also had friends that worked the same shift so we would often stay up even later. At work I often felt tired after having slept all day and waking up just in time to shower before my 5:00 PM work time.
I knew I wasn't getting restful sleep, so in order to determine the cause I began my first tracking experiment. How can you fix a problem if you don't know where you are starting from? I know know I had heard good things about Fitbit and I knew it tracked sleep so I purchased a Fitbit One. I chose that one in particular because I pretty much always have pockets and at the time it was the only one that measured flights of stairs. I started taking simple measurements of fluid, caffeine, nicotine and hours of sleep. The feedback I was looking at was how restful my sleep actually was. If something I was doing worked well, I went with it. Eventually I switched to a day job and had a much different problem. Mornings were my new enemy. I continued tracking sleep for a while, but since I was not really doing anything with the data I didn't care when I lost the wrist strap, I just clipped the Fitbit One to my pillow, made sure it was on sensitive mode, and dealt with it.
More recently I've decided that I want to feel rested at work. Since I didn't really like the feel of having to wear a wrist strap every night I was looking for other options. I was looking for something that would have great connectivity with other types of trackers, but also something that had the ability to provide high quality data should the need arise. I decided on the Sleep as Android application for my phone. It provides wonderful charts and as a bonus for me it has ways to tweak the snooze setting. One major problem I have had since having an alarm clock has been the snooze button. I would just hit it and hit it and barely even be aware of it some mornings. I always had to resort to tricks like having the clock on the other side of the room. Sleep as Android offers the ability to modify the duration of the snooze and limit the number of times it can be pressed. If that doesn't get you, there are several different captcha type games that force you to think in order to turn them off. There is even the option to print off a QR code which you can put somewhere else in your house that you must get up and scan to turn the alarm off. I haven't had the need of that functionality yet, but that would have saved me many snoozes when I was younger.
For now my sleep is mostly regular. I want the quality of my sleep to improve. This will be my first documented project in which I attempt to modify my behavior based on the data I am collecting. My daily goal is to get 7 hours of sleep, but realistically I am only in bed for that amount of time and don't fall asleep the minute I get into bed. I do my hardest to only use the Sleep as Android app in bed, so I do not stare at a screen all night. Having a phone in bed is a very bad habit and I know I have spent many a night laying awake just reading internet.
Looking at the baseline for the last half year I have:
Duration Deficit: -0:13
Deep Sleep Cycles 46% 3:07 (5x)
Noise Snoring: 10% 0:06
The past 2 weeks I've been much worse:
Duration Deficit: -0:27
Deep Sleep Cycles 46% 3:01 (5x)
Noise Snoring: 12% 0:06
I suppose much worse is a bit of an overstatement.
My current target condition for Duration Deficit is ± 0:00.
My first experiment will be to actually be in bed 7 hours and 30 minutes before I would like to wake up. Giving myself some time to settle.
I'll have to start tomorrow because I've already past that mark tonight. Goodnight.
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