How did I sleep?

The last three nights somebody slept very close to me: my phone.

I tested the app “sleep cycle” to measure the depth, length and quality of my sleep.

It’s very easy to download the app, you position your phone next to yourself on top of the mattress, possibly somewhere where you don’t roll over during the night.

Though I am not very happy with the amount of data you can export from that app, its still very interesting what the statistics tell you in the morning:

(unfortunately this is in German, sorry, but I translated a few words):

You can see: I was in bed from 00:39 until 07:39 and had a fitful sleep.

Another disadvantage this app has: it only measures the time in bed and not the hours of “real sleep”. The sleeping quality of this night on Monday was 63%: you can see the sleep quality when you export your data, because it needs at least data from 5 nights to show the sleep quality directly in the app.

Low sleep quality, not enough hours of sleep and awake at 3 in the morning.

Explanation for that: Assignment dues and living in an apartment with walls out of paper together with a Spanish flatmate who cooks at 3 in the morning in the kitchen next to my room on a regular basis.

What is interesting:

The sleep quality does not seem to be directly related to the length of sleep:

Though I had less sleep from Tuesday to Moday, the quality of this nights sleep is higher (76%).

Last night I had a very deep sleep, which could be related to the fact, that my flatmate didn’t come home last night; But she did this morning: Guess when? 6 in the morning - you can see it in the statistics.

I tried to import the data in tableaux, but unfortunately not much was possible to do there with the data I could export through the app.

Maybe there is another way to export more data - would be interesting.

I think the whole quantified self movement has two sides:

Yes, it is very useful for medical reasons and also on a personal basis to improve the fitness of your body or something like that.

I also read about apps which measure the emotions of your relationship and then tell you what to do or not to do.

In my opinion one has to be careful with that. We are human beings and normally we should have intuitive feelings what is good for ourselves and what is not.

It may sound a little bit cheesy, I know: But if we more and more rely on apps like that and not ask ourselves how we think or feel about particular things, we could loose the sensitivity for our own body and our own mind.