In the last week of January 2024, I decided to fix my sleep, so I came up with the Zest mode, which I spoke about it here
The first attempt of using Zest Mode was on a sleep schedule which was based on Everyman 1, a polyphasic sleep schedule that consists of 6 hours of sleep at night (9pm to 3 am) , and 20-minute nap during the day (12-12:20).
On the First of February 2024, I started the challenge.
Here is the weekly break down of the average daily sleep time for each week:
Week one = 5 hours and 57 minutes.
Week two = 6 hours and 20 minute
Week three = 6 hours 12 minutes
Week Four = 6 hours 12 minutes
Week Five = 5 hours 34 minutes
Week Six = 6 hours 51 minutes
Week Seven = 5 hours 38.4 minutes
Week Eight = 5 hours 40 minutes
Week Nine = 5 hours 59 minutes
Week Ten = 5 hours 50 minutes
The average slept hours during the entire 10 weeks ( the documented days) = 6 hours 13 minutes
You might think that 6 hours and 13 minutes isn’t a bad score, because it’s almost 6 hours and 20 minute. You are right however things aren’t that simple the way it seems.
Here are 4 reasons why I couldn’t stick with the schedule.
Giving Myself Too Much Flexibility with Sleep Time
This flexibility was about having the option to either sleep at 9, 10 pm or 10:30 pm.
In theory, that sounded nice and helped me more to check off the habit of Sleep Schedule.
However the problem was, it made me more prone to allow myself to sleep around 9 pm and onward, this hurt my sleep adaptation and made the challenge hard to complete successfully.
When it comes to sleep schedules sleeping you need to sleep at the same time (it’s supposed to be 9 pm) but since my sleeping time was from 9:30 to 10 pm that definitely screw up the adaptation process.
That’s reason one.
Lost My Smartwatch Charger
This might seems silly of a reason, but It had some effects on me. I had to order it and wait for weeks for it to be delivered to home address.
During the waiting time I felt less motivated to track my sleep times since I had no sleep tracking device. What I used instead is noting at what time I closed and opened my eyes. I had to approximate 10-15 minutes of falling asleep since the exact time was unknown to me.
Didn’t Read The Zest Mode 5 Steps Every Day
Zest mode has 5 elements:
- reading the habit plan (30 sec)
- Read the habit statement (30 sec)
- Picturing myself as a role model and live it with all the emotion (30 sec)
- Reading the commitment contract (30 sec)
- Executing the sleep schedule habit, checking the habit off on a journal or a habit tracker, then waiting for the next day to repeat the steps 1-5 until you complete the Zest Mode.
All what I did is doing the habit statement and executing the sleep schedule habit.
This didn’t help me to absorb the steps into my subconscious mind so that I commit to sticking through the entire challenge.
Lost The Drive To Document My Days
This can be a weird reason, but yes starting from day 70 toward 90, I wasn’t documenting anything. it’s like if my challenge was a 70 days challenge.
I kept telling myself I will do it when the smart watch’s charger arrived, but by the time it did, only few days left before the challenge was supposed to end.
The Lessons From This Experience
I tested the Zest Mode firsthand and it didn’t go like expected, which is okay. Every framework might need multiple of iterations to work effectively.
The good aspect of this experience is that I had more discipline compared to my recent previous attempts.
The punishment wasn’t very motivating to follow through, like if you set your mom as someone you would give her your losing bet, what would you expect?
What should be the next challenge? same sleep schedule but with better implementation for the Zest Mode.
Stay tuned for more updates!
