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Originally Posted by Excelsius  I'll try to post my results as frequently as I can, but probably what I'll end up doing is just publishing the entire data after I'm done. I have made an excel spreadsheet and this is what I'm recording:
1. Date
2. Sleep start time
3. Sleep end time
4. Duration
5. Caffeine amount ingested
6. Time when caffeine was ingested
7. Time when began feeling tired
8. Tiredness level (scale of 1-5)
9. Physical Activity level (1-5)
10. Mental Activity level (1-5)
11. # of Hours of TV
12. # of Hours of Internet
13. Notes
Are there any more fields that you think I should add? After I have reliable data, it will be very easy to make 2 and 3D graphs and correlations will come through. It's not likely that I will take on a rigid discipline right away until my finals are over at mid-December, but I have started recording the data anyway. Recording qualitative data consistently (fields 8 to 10) is going to be the most difficult, but I'll do my best.
I believe that if all of us were able to unitize our time 100% efficiently (no TV, internet, etc.) we would not need to cut down time from our sleep. Including the # of hours spent on these can really make us realize our addiction to these media and thus take corrective action. In US, people watch more than 4 hours a day. In 75 yr lifespan, that adds up to 150 months or almost 13 years! Now consider that 20% or more of TV are ads. This means you spend almost 3 years watching only commercials! This is just crazy. Even tying shoelaces eventually adds up to several days. Unlike polyphasic sleep, these small things in our lives are much easier to control. I haven't been in a movie theater for 2 years and only watch 0-2 movies a week on commercial free HBO. BUT, I think I spend too much time on the internet, even though it is mostly for educational purposes. |
Wow, you're really going all-out on the sleep logs--this looks really awesome, and should provide some great data. What you've got there in terms of fields is far more than I would have thought of, but in terms of other possibilities, I have one idea: if you believe you can track it objectively, record the duration and intensity of
sleep inertia after each nap--from when you shut off the alarm to when you are alert and awake (you would have to determine ahead of time what your standard is for being alert and awake). For example, this morning my sleep inertia was intense--it was hard to get myself moving--but it dissipated fairly quickly--after only about 10 or 15 minutes. Up to you if you want to include that in your report; I just think it's an interesting factor to consider in monitoring any sleep schedule.