Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Get Eight Hours of Good Sleep
 define good sleep

So this is what I have so far: good sleep habits --> good sleep --> good life stuff.

I like putting things into tables:

GOOD SLEEP HABITSGOOD SLEEPGOOD LIFE STUFF
* straighten the sheets
* turn down the temp
* turn down the lights
is what?* health
* fitness
* performance
* body composition

I feel like sleep is emotional, right? Especially if you have insomnia. Also if you're Asian, you're always going to feel like you could do better. Also, SMART goals. So I felt like I needed a somewhat standardized scale to measure my results, and this is what I came up with:

  • first, sleep quantity, just what it says on the tin, I'm going for eight hours of sleep.
  • and next, sleep quality, I'm going for good sleep, well actually, I'm okay with not bad sleep, see below.

Eight hours of sleep, more or less

I feel like I always have to put it on the table that I'm an organism that needs to spend a third of its existence asleep, and furthermore, another third when I'm awake at rest, and that leaves just a third to do work so I'd better make the most of it.

But also I think that sleep, like weight, fluctuates, so this is eight hours with tolerances. I'm okay with six hours on the low end and ten hours on the high end. Now that I've tuned up my sleep habits, I get eight usually, ten sometimes, and six every now and again. I'm satisfied with this, I'd go back to the drawing board if I felt like I was hanging out too much on the high or low ends. I do a quick checkup if I'm over ten or under six on a given night— that's only been once or twice, though.

Good sleep, or close enough

Okay so, what is good sleep? I thought this over and decided that the following needed to be present:

  • undelayed
  • uninterrupted
  • deep
  • with dreams
  • wake up rested

Extra bonus points for:

  • good dreams
  • waking up with a sense of well being

I mapped it out on the Munt scale:

  • 5 - good - undelayed uninterrupted deep sleep, good dreams, wake up rested with sense of well being
  • 4 - not bad - undelayed uninterrupted deep sleep, dreams, wake up rested
  • 3 - not half bad - undelayed interrupted or delayed uninterrupted deep sleep, dreams, wake up rested
  • 2 - not good - delayed interrupted deep sleep, dreams, wake up tired
  • 1 - bad - delayed interrupted light sleep, no dreams, wake up tired with sense of dread

Here it is color coded!

sleepqual scale

I'm satisfied if my sleep is not bad, and stoked if it's good now and again. I don't know if I should aim higher? It's usually not bad, and sometimes not half bad; it's almost never delayed now that I've figured out about turning the lights down, but now and again it still gets interrupted. Maybe I can tune some things up to take care of that, then maybe I can try to figure out how not to dream about people who've been dead redying, gah. Though you know what I don't dream about anymore, school, thank god for that.

I track sleep quantity and quality in the first two columns of my SNIKT! chart, maybe I will show you that soon.