About me
Hi, I'm Chris. I've had insomnia since I can remember. For years I avoided taking notes about my sleep because I worried it would make me even more anxious about getting to sleep. Wearables like Fitbit did allow me to do some sleep tracking, but they often missed awakenings or said I was awake when I was not, and they couldn't capture how I felt during the day—what I actually cared about.
I started keeping a detailed sleep diary in 2021 and began to track my sleep more seriously, going as far as using a security camera and using other apps to track how much I snored. Instead of making me more nervous, it reduced my anxiety. I finally had a baseline to work with: how much I typically sleep, and which habits help or hurt.
Keeping a sleep diary also gave me the confidence to talk my doctor that there was something wrong with how I felt (it can be daunting to talk about sleep problems with your health provider), where I was diagnosed with close to severe sleep apnea on my back.
A sleep diary isn't going to solve all of your problems, but gathering information is the first step to making progress and it's helped me more than I expected. And I hope it can help you as much as it has helped me.