Week 4 Lab: Sleep, Health, and Exercise

A Lab setting a sleep and exercise schedule with a stated fallback for a bad week

Before the Lab#

Bring your week 2 hygiene schedule; this Lab extends it to sleep and exercise, on the same model.

In the Lab#

Introduction. Last week’s ranking exercise showed the same outfit landing differently depending on the occasion — the fit was never fixed, only the occasion changed. This week runs the same test on a schedule: not whether the plan sounds good, but whether it survives a week that doesn’t cooperate.

Activity 1 (groups of 4): Jordan’s Week case study. Each group is handed the following case study:

Jordan’s Week

Monday: Plan says asleep by 11:30pm. Actual: still awake at 3am finishing an assignment. Plan says gym at 7am. Actual: alarm snoozed four times, gym skipped.

Tuesday: “Will sleep early tonight,” typed into a note that is never looked at again. Stayed up until 2am watching one more episode. Exercise logged as “30 min run”; actually walked to the vending machine and back twice.

Wednesday: Skipped breakfast, ate two-minute noodles at 1pm and again at 9pm. Told a friend “I’ve been so good with food lately.”

Thursday: Went to bed on time for the first time all week. Woke up anyway at 4am to check a phone notification and stayed up.

Friday: No plan was made for this day at all.

Saturday: Slept until 2pm to “catch up,” then couldn’t sleep until 4am that night.

Sunday: Wrote next week’s plan. It is identical to this week’s plan.

Jordan’s week contains six stated intentions and zero actual times.

Groups analyse what’s realistic, what’s just wishful thinking, what fails first, and agree on the single most useful fix.

Presentation: Each group presents their one best fix only.

Activity 2: Build your own plan. Individually, extend your week 2 hygiene schedule with the same model: a sleep schedule with a target bedtime and a fallback for the night it slips, and an exercise plan with a stated frequency and a named activity — not “sleep more” or “exercise more.” A real plan needs a time, not an intention.

Discussion / debrief (pairs): Show your sleep schedule and exercise plan to one other student; they reject anything in either that reads as an intention rather than a stated time.

Wrap-up: Keep your sleep schedule and exercise plan; revise either before Assignment 3 asks for updated versions of both, marked in week 12.

Afterwards#

Keep your sleep schedule and exercise plan. Revise either before Assignment 3 asks for updated versions of both, marked in week 12. Assignment 2 also checks your activity against this same exercise plan’s stated frequency and named activity, before then.