Luma A. and David F. a healthy adventure
We did the formal data presentation in class which summarized the objective data collection. However, to fully understand the a health goal, the emotional and mental progress of the person needs to be taken into consideration. Thus, our blog post is conducted in an interview format to synthesize the objective and subjective findings.
David: Do you feel like a more regular sleep schedule made it easier for you to make it to class on time and feel less stressed?
Luma: While I wish it was that simple, David, I still felt very tired when I woke up each morning regardless of when I went to sleep. This made it harder to wake up with ample time to make it to my morning classes.
David: The data that we collected supports that a regular sleep schedule did not help you with your tardiness. The Fitbit data shows that you woke often during the night and underwent many periods of restless sleep. Do you think your tardiness was because you were not receiving quality sleep?
Luma: It is possible that a lack of quality sleep at night is contributing to my ability to wake up feeling rested, making me more prone to snoozing and oversleeping. I feel that when I go to bed, I don’t often think about whether or not I will be getting quality sleep – but rather, whether I have fulfilled a number quota. Along those lines, it will be interesting to see how sleep quality affects my morning energy.
David: I have one more question. The stress questionnaire showed no change in stress level from one week to the next. In the initial interview on the first day of class I felt like tardiness would affect your stress level. I know that we did not decrease your tardiness, but do you still think that tardiness affects your stress levels?
Luma: I think the more I make it a priority to be on time to my arrangements, the more stressed I become when I am tardy. This is definitely a good thing, because it motivates me to work hard to change my habits. This is a habit that has formed from a young age, so this project has made me conscious of the extent of my tardiness.
Luma: My turn to interview you now! The results of several weeks of data collection allowed us to track the usual amount of time you spend doing a variety of activities throughout the day. In 24 hours, approximately 20% was spent socializing, 11% was spent doing homework and 15% was spent doing non-descript activities. How did seeing the breakdown of time spent in your day affect the way you viewed your time management?
David: I realized that a lot of my day was spent in transition. And after a couple of days of tracking my day I started to make a plan in the morning in order to minimize the amount of time spent walking to other places. In a way, I was procrastinating by moving around to different places and I decided I needed to change that. I feel like if there was another week of data collection you would see less time in the “other” slice of the pie and more time in the “gym” slice. The socializing slice (including watching youtube and listening to spotify) surprised me with it taking up one-fifth of my day! Even when logging my time I didn’t realize that socializing was taking up so much of my day.
Luma: One of your biggest stated reasons for not going to the gym was your ability to finish your schoolwork for the day. With this in mind, can you compare your schedule and mood on days you went to the gym versus when you didn’t?
David: I felt great after leaving the gym because I get rid of a lot of extra energy that can cause me to get distracted while working on my homework. When I don’t go the gym I find that I have more energy and with this I procrastinate. While I am studying I also go back and forth on whether I have time to go to the gym or not and this also causes me to be distracted and stressed. I am most productive when I decide to go to the gym in the morning and then follow through with this plan so that I don’t feel guilt or have extra energy.
Luma: Your score on Lay’s General Procrastination Scale (http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/prcrasts.pdf) at the beginning of the PHP indicated that your procrastination is not strongly related to an inherent personality trait, which formed my interventions and data collection moving forward with the project. What do you believe to be the root causes of your daily procrastination, if not a personality trait?
David: When I am not interested in an assignment or perceive an assignment as really difficult I will procrastinate. This uninterest or fear of starting an assignment outweighs the consequences of starting an assignment late and being stressed out. Now, I see that the consequences of procrastination results in less gym time, more stress and overall an unhealthy outlook in life.
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