Year in Review: Sleep

The Year In Review:

Of all the metrics I've tracked over this year, besides todo lists and hourly journaling, sleep logging is the one I've been able to maintain over time. I think it's because I've been able to register my sleep using timestamps sent via email and IFTTT Google Home automations, which can then be backfilled later. By contrast, gratitude journaling or fitness logging do not have this level of sophistication and can only be done the moment of, or otherwise would be lost (and therefore, is, on an increasingly consistent basis).

I've also regressed in terms of being able to load my sleep log data onto my own platforms, mostly because I can't get my Jupyter notebook to support printing times on the y-axis, and because my data needs to be cleaned up before importing into my app, which I haven't really used a whole lot throughout the entire year.

So here's a screenshot (open in new tab to get the full resolution, it is big and pretty that way):

sleeplog

I can make some observations just by looking at this data alone:

  • I've gotten better about dialing forwards my sleep (the downward trend in the various dots): At the beginning of this year, I used to sleep around 2-3AM. Now, I sleep around midnight. I'm getting old. Also I think I'm drinking a bit more caffeine now, I had a bit of a caffeine inflection point of sorts from drinking the half-liter Ito En green teas from the Wegman's at Tyson's Corner, that caffeine lasts in my system a long time, and it does wacky things I think. So I'm not sure if it's all a good thing.

  • I've been getting a lot better about managing times getting out of bed: Before July or so, I wasn't doing personal training and therefore got up like whenever, which at times was something like 6PM. Now, that would let somebody else down who is explicitly expecting me, so I have to get up. And I've been doing that for so long, I think it's a stable-ish habit.

Overall, it's a slow but steady change towards becoming a responsible adult. Going forwards into next year, I think I will continue to track my sleep habits, because sleep, food, and hydration directly affect my ability to powerlift.