Moonlight
I have a watch that tracks how long I sleep. I’m uncertain of its accuracy, but it’s the only sleep information I have. I recently checked my average sleep time over the past year, and to no surprise, it was horrendous:
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| Weekly average: 6 hours and 39 minutes |
I can’t remember the last time I’ve had adequate sleep. Eight hours a night sounds like a pile of fine sand—I try to catch it every night, but the grains slip between my fingers, and suddenly it’s 12:30am again. Where did all the time go?
Sometimes I stay up late to finish homework or other things I need to get done. I vividly remember putting off my calculus homework until 11pm and working until 1am, or writing notes for APUSH until 4am as Sunday nights transition to Monday mornings and the decisions of the previous week catch up to me. But other nights, I finish my homework early, at around 10pm, and I stay awake rather than going to sleep. The result is the same—I end up staying up way too late, and any hope for a good night’s rest is extinguished.
OOH-AHH
I recently learned about this phenomenon called “bedtime procrastination”, which is defined as volitionally staying up late despite knowing full well the consequences of getting inadequate sleep. And when I read that, I felt that it described exactly what I had been doing. On days where I don’t need to stay up late due to responsibilities, I still end up staying late sometimes. Sometimes it’s because of something specific. When I discovered Hypixel, I stayed up until 3am playing bedwars. Just a few days ago, I stayed up past midnight trying to debug a button on a website that wasn’t working properly. Either way, the reason isn’t important, since the result is the same; I lose sleep, feel tired the next morning, and regret not sleeping earlier.
I don’t think I need to talk about the benefits of sleep. I’ve heard them many times already and I’m sure everyone has. But phrases such as “reduced stress” and “lower risk of chronic conditions” seem so abstract! When I read about the benefits of sleep, I don’t think of any of those applying to me. Sure, I would like to reduce my stress and improve my mood, but it doesn’t seem all that important past 12am.
But I recently stumbled across this article. It defined five “low-risk sleep factors” as follows: “sleep duration 7–8 h/day; difficulty falling asleep ≤2 times/week, trouble staying asleep ≤2 times/week; waking feeling rested ≥5 days/week; and no sleep medication use (Cronbach’s α = 0.7)” The study found that people who met all five low-risk sleep factors had a greater life expectancy than people who only met 0 or 1.1 The disparity was 2.4 years for women and 4.7 years for men. That’s a lot of time that poor sleep can cost, and for me, that’s a wake-up call (and a realization that, even though the amount I sleep is inadequate, the quality of my sleep could be way worse).
TT2
Maybe the problem comes from my brain’s warped perception of value. Maybe, when it’s 10pm or 11pm and I can go to sleep, my mind is considering the opportunity cost of staying up late, and maybe, it values the time I get to spend, alone and awake, more than feeling refreshed eight hours from now. The morning feels so distant that my brain discounts the benefits that I could reap.
For me, screens are the main problem. Yes, there’s tons of advice about how to get better sleep, but as someone who’s still struggling with this, I feel hesitant to give advice myself. I do hope to fix my sleep schedule before college starts though. We’ll see what happens.
Life Update!
While I’m still waiting on most of my college decisions, I suppose I could talk about something I’ve been working on recently. Last semester, I took a course called “Intro to Web Authoring” where I learned how to use HTML and CSS to make websites (I made a website about IZ*ONE, obviously). I think it’s really cool how CSS can turn a website from a bunch of black text on a white background to a decent-looking website! Learning about transitions, grid, and flexbox was difficult, and working with Git was new to me, but I think it’s going well! While it’s not ready yet—most of the links lead nowhere—I’ll continue working on it and hopefully post my weekly posts there too!
I have a microeconomics test on Tuesday. Hopefully it goes well? The class is half-empty compared to how it was at the beginning due to people dropping out, and that artificially raised the mean test scores by several points. Our last test covered game theory in relation to oligopolies and collusion, which was fun! (And the highest test score I’ve gotten in that class.) Let’s pray this test goes well.
1. Li H, Qian F, Han L, Feng W, Zheng D, Guo X, Zhang H. Association of healthy sleep patterns with risk of mortality and life expectancy at age of 30 years: a population-based cohort study. QJM. 2024 Mar 27;117(3):177-186. doi: 10.1093/qjmed/hcad237. PMID: 37831896.↩
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