Jason's Log

Three Rules For Choosing Your Battles Wisely

Inspired by the FB status update of a friend, I was somehow inspired to write up a set of rules for how to choose which battles one should enter into. My three rules for choosing your battles wisely are: 

1. First, choose only those battles you are likely to win.
2. Choose only those battles that afford you a high degree of plausible deniability, just in case all hell breaks loose. 
3. Choose only those battles which, if lost, will still leave you with a large dose of emotional satisfaction at the trail of destruction you leave behind.

Sleep Stats: Plenty of REM, too little Z

I've now collected nearly two weeks of sleep data with the Zeo, and the results so far are mildly encouraging. During this entire period I did not consume any caffeine after 3pm, and I ate nothing after 7pm each day. That seems to help. In addition, I only go to bed when I feel sleepy - eyes drooping, yawning - instead of trying to force an artificial sleep schedule on my brain stem.

Here is the overview for the month - showing that I get slightly under 6 hours of sleep, on average, each night:

Here is the breakdown, with comparisons to others in my age bracket. On the minus side, I seem to be getting less total sleep than most (by almost an hour), but I do get quite a bit more REM sleep. Does that compensate? Not sure...

Some secondary statistics here - showing that I tend to fall asleep quite quickly (6 minutes). It also shows that I am something of a night owl, going to bed after midnight on a regular basis. But at least I am consistent!

Here is the chart of my total amount of sleep:

Here is my time in REM sleep:

The data collection will continue - although I'm not yet ready to make any radical changes or look for some pathology in these results. I'm mostly just fascinated by the data.

First week of sleep results with My Zeo

It has been just over a week since the arrival of my Zeo Personal Sleep Coach device, and to be completely honest, the results were a total surprise to me.

For the longest time, I had believed and would frequently claim that it took me hours and hours to fall asleep at night. My belief was so strong that I would frequently regale listeners with tales of my sleep woes. The only problem is that I was completely wrong. My average 'Time to Onset of Sleep' this last week has been about 4 minutes.

The second Jason Sleep Myth to be busted is the claim that I never dream. I based this on the fact that I rarely if ever remember dreams of any kind. Well, if dreaming is what occurs during REM sleep. then I appear to be getting pleny of opportunity - almost 2 hours each night.

I plan to continue the experiment for a while, but below is a summary of my first week: