Getting Enough Sleep Analysis

I chose to form the habit of getting enough sleep, 7-8 hours and to improve my quality of sleep. While reading the sections about sleep in our Waymaker text, I was really glad I had chosen to develop this habit. I learned that sleep is critical for memory formation and learning. I have learned that studying by testing and quizzing myself and getting enough sleep work together to boost my long term memory of the things I have studied and learned.

My plan for developing the habit of getting more sleep is to stop using electronic devices at least one hour before going to bed, this one was difficult and I didn’t track it. When there were nights that my mind was wound up from that days events I journaled or read to help me calm down and get into a sleep mode rather than “scrolling” on my phone. This helped me to get sleepy rather than keep me awake “scrolling” needlessly. On the evenings that I got to bed later I slept in an extra thirty minutes and cut out my long morning shower, makeup and fancy hairdos. Overall I gained an average of thirty additional minutes of sleep time. I went from an average of 7 hours to 7.5 hours per night.

On my chart I tracked the day, hours of sleep, insights/progress notes, if I followed my plan and if my plan was working.

In the insights/progress section I recorded life challenges and test/quiz scores. I notice that I do get extra sleep during the weekend, I’d like to even that out better and get a more consistent number of hours of sleep throughout the week, not just a lot to “catch-up” during the weekend. I also noticed that during the days when I got less than seven hours of sleep I was more groggy and impatient the next day. During the two days that I got less than six hours of sleep I was very ineffective those days and truly drug my feet to keep going. Caffeine didn’t help on those days. When I went more than one or two days with less than seven hours of sleep I started feeling the effects of the accuring

sleep-dept.

According to Brown, McDaniel, and Roediger, (2014), “mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it.” I was thrilled to learn more about sleep during the second week of tracking my sleep progress. I was able to gain more knowledge, particularly during a time when I slept more, and apply it to my practice.

“When “learning from experience” we need to cultivate the habit of reflection.” “Reflection is a form of retrieval practice (What happened? What did I do? and How did it work?), enhanced with elaboration (What will I do Differently next time?).”(Brown et al., 2014, p. 66) To reflect on my getting more sleep goal I have answered these questions above. This will help me to perform better, to get enough sleep more days than not, in the future.