I’m joining the party with my out-of-bed goal! This goal is a commitment to stay out of bed after my alarm goes off in the morning, with fine print specifying what this means. In spirit, the goal is a commitment to not snooze alarms or interrupt my sleep unnecessarily with electronics use. The fine print also makes this goal a commitment to not use electronics in the morning in bed when I am groggy and inclined to ruin my morning/day by doing so.
My hesitation/response to my own hesitation:
I have one hesitation about committing to this goal, which is that during the December Dry Run, I noticed myself setting an alarm much less frequently than I have in the past. As a result, I’ve been waking up later, sleeping more, and seeing more variance in my wake-up times. I think this is partly due to winter, the holidays, and biological needs. On the other hand, it’s been very positive for my physical and mental health to not use electronics in bed in the morning and to not set overly ambitious alarms that interrupt my sleep.
One way to see this situation is that the out-of-bed goal accomplishes a necessary but not sufficient component of achieving the sleep habits that I want. I can modularize the various components into various Beeminder goals, rather than wrapping them all up into one. For Ride or Die 2024 with the out-of-bed goal, I’m committing to just a couple aspects of improving my sleep habits.
Fine print changes
After the December Dry Run, I made some changes specifying under what circumstances I can change the alarm time. I also decided to take away the sick day exception. I replaced it with a break of an amount of days equal to the amount of sick days I anticipate I might need.