I've mentioned in the past that I believe getting enough sleep is a key component to happiness and success. I also believe that the quality of sleep contributes to these factors. Because of this, I've been using an application on my phone that tracks my sleep, for the past year. Basically, you tell the application what time you'd like to wake up, and then tell it how much earlier you're willing to be woken up. Then, you put it next to you on your mattress while you sleep, and based on your movements, it can estimate what stage of sleep you're in and wake you up at the best time.

I've definitely noticed that I wake up less groggy most of the time, but since moving out here, I've also noticed something else. The picture above shows two recorded nights of sleep. One of them is from late April, leading up to finals and end of semester projects. The other one is from two nights ago, near the end of my second week of full-time employment. Even though I went to bed later and woke up earlier in the more recent recording, I spent an hour and a half more time in deep sleep, which is where your brain is doing most of its resting.

So what?

It could just be an anomaly, and once I have more data, I'll average it all out and get some more concrete results. But I think this aligns with what I was saying in an earlier post, about how quickly I've become adjusted to my new life. I'm actually sleeping noticeably better, not restless or tossing and turning all the time, and it could very well be because, subconsciously, I'm exactly where I want to be with my life. Or maybe not, maybe this was just one strange reading, or maybe the new bed is just more comfortable, or maybe I'm incorrect in correlating deep sleep with happiness. In any case, time will tell.

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