Eating up Time Josh Petras EDUC 526 16 January 2014

Abstract: This study is designed to study the relationship between being disciplined with your time and being disciplined with your eating. The study will examine both areas of discipline and how they affect the other. Information will be gathered to see how often misuse of time leads to undisciplined eating, and how often undisciplined eating leads to wasted minutes. The study will take place over the course of 4 weeks. Section One: Introduction A bible verse that has stood out to me for a while is Proverbs 25:28: Like a city that is broken into and without walls Is a man who has no control over his spirit This Proverb talks about the need for spiritual discipline. The message is clearly a warning that a man who is not disciplined is vulnerable to sin. He opens himself up to be taken by the passions of his heart instead of being directed by the truth of discipline. This project is designed to study the disciplined life. Namely, it is a study that will address the discipline of completing responsibilities and its relationship with the discipline of overeating. I chose this study because of difficulties I have had in my own life. As someone who is carrying a lot of responsibility, I dont have time to waste. However, I constantly find myself taking longer leisure times than I need or flat out ignoring responsibilities. I also have noticed a pattern of undisciplined eating in my life. I will eat excessively when bored or just out of habit. I often cant exercise the self-control I know I need to in this area. I know these are both areas in my life that I need to change. I am concerned that by giving myself to passions over discipline in one area that I may be opening myself up to falling in multiple areas. Obviously there are times when relaxing is not only acceptable but is necessary. However, I want to be sure that I am using my life in a way that is most useful and effective. I want to see if there is a correlation between the amounts of times a day I eat excessively and the number of minutes wasted in a day.

Section Two: Implementation In order to make sure that I am measuring the data needed to do my research, I will need to take time to reflect 2-3 times a day. I will collect data for 6 weeks in order to come to a conclusion. I will begin each week creating a schedule of the tasks I need to complete and will be checking the schedule at the beginning of each day. I will use the schedule as a basis for determining the amount of minutes wasted. During the times I spend reflecting, I will be looking a few details. I will ask myself how many times I have snacked excessively that day and how many minutes I have wasted in my schedule. At the same time, I will record notes that discuss if overeating led to wasted time or vice versa. Strategies I will use in order to be disciplined are: Check of duties on my schedule to keep self-motivated Be flexible in moving stuff around, but write down changes Think about what normal eating looks like for the day in order to compare in order to determine if Im overeating Remember that habits and patterns take time to form Take extra time in creating the calendar for the week

Section Three: Results Results for this study were recorded and determined using a few different tools. The first necessity in order to complete this study was to determine what exactly it looked like to waste time. The balance in defining this term can be a little complicated. On the one hand, I needed to realize that no one person can work with vigor and focus at all times. All people need to rest at one point or another. On the other hand, I needed to be critical of my own bias within the study. If I am too lenient in determining whether or not I have been lazy, then I will be quick to classify excessive amounts of wasted time as necessary rest time. In order to successfully determine what wasted time would look like, I decided I would make a template of a weekly schedule based on the required duties Id have for any particular week (see

appendix A). If the purpose of being disciplined to use my time wisely in a way that I can complete all my tasks, then this was the most logical way to base my wasted time. I spent less time determining what would be considered excessive eating. I am someone who already eats when theyre bored and who thinks about eating too much. I decided to classify excessing eating as any snacking or eating that occurred when I wasnt hungry, unless it occurred on a date night with my wife. I figured eating for fun on a date was fairly normal, but that all other times were potentially harmful activities to my work ethic. In order to keep track of the hours I wasted and the times I snacked, I kept a chart (see appendix B). The goal was to use these statistics that I gathered over the four week time period to see if there is any relationship between the two activities. Before discussing the data, it is necessary to inform the reader that two of the four weeks occurred during times that are the normal pattern of my life. In the middle of week three of data recording was Christmas. The work responsibilities for these days were low and the time spent visiting family who had good food was at a high. Week 4 was also a different week, as there was New Years Eve, New Years Day, and a weekend winter camp for my high school group I had to oversee. Despite these circumstances, there is a sufficient amount of data to be analyzed from what data was recorded. I began analyzing by simply placing the data into a bar graph, separating the information for amount of times snacked and the amount of time wasted. Since the goal was to analyze the relationship between overeating and wasting time, I grouped together the data of the two different categories based on the week of the recording period. The graph below illustrates the four weeks worth of data, consisting of the amount of time wasted and the amount of overeating that occurred per week.

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There is a lot of information to notice in the chart above. First, it must be noted that between weeks one and two, there is an increase in both categories. The amount of time wasted between week one and week two increased dramatically and, while it wasnt as severe, the amount of times I ate excessively increased also. If we were to compare week two and week four, there is a decrease in both categories going from the first to the second. A few other interesting notes must be made. Week three has, by far, the most amount of times spent overeating. However, it has a much smaller amount of time wasted than week two. This is related to week three falling on Christmas and Christmas Eve, where I had no work to be done on those two days. It may also be noted that in week four there is the smallest amount of time wasted, but excessive eating is greater than that of week one. After looking at the weekly breakdown, I decided to look at the breakdown of the different days of the weeks. The goal was to notice patterns in any particular days of the week and then determine what makes those days unique. Obviously these results arent 100% reliable, as two of the Wednesdays were New Years Day and Christmas, but the rest of the days were available for fair observation. The chart below is an illustration of the data of the number of times eating excessively and the time wasted during specific days during the four-week period.

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Looking at the graph, there are a few details that jump out immediately. The first is that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays seem to imply that overeating and wasting time are inversely correlated. However, this data cant be taken 100% due to the holidays on these particular days. When comparing Mondays to Thursdays and Saturdays, there seems to be a correlation where time wasted and overeating increase and decrease together. However, Friday and Sunday seem to imply the opposite, since time wasted on these days are low but overeating has some of its highest numbers. A few other notes can be made about all the data collected. The data does seem to imply that whenever time wasted is at a high, so are the numbers for the amount of time overeating. There are also times when both sets of numbers are high or both sets of numbers are low. However, there are never any times where the amount of time wasted is high and the overeating is at a low. Section Four: Conclusions This study was very helpful in giving me some data to evaluate my heart and my discipline. I clearly see from this project that I am someone who naturally wants to be lazy or who wants to overeat. Without even looking at the relationship between the two weaknesses, the numbers are staggeringly clear that I need to improve in both of these areas. Some changes need to be made.

The biggest conclusion to draw from this data is that there are many ways that I can be undisciplined, but that one area seems to affect another. I need to get my eating under control. I need to stop being selfish and start eating to live, not living to eat. However, the data can also show that the way I go about not eating is not necessarily through time management. I will need to find a different means to control my eating. At the same time, I also have recognized that I need to be careful with my eating on weeks that I am really busy. While overeating doesnt imply that I will waste time, there is some relationship between the two where it can happen. Being undisciplined in one area can affect my discipline in another area. I may need to monitor my eating for the sake of my schedule. If I could start this research project over, I would like to make a few changes. I would start by trying not to record data over any major holidays. This is not due to the temptation to eat, but the lack of any responsibilities to measure the utilization of my time. I believe my numbers may have given some different results had I picked a different time frame. I also wish I had recorded time I spent in the Word on particular days. Though the numbers cant show it, I believe the days I got up at 4, read my Bible, and prayed were the days that I did the best with discipline. The times when my heart was right and I was trying to honor Christ were the times I was most disciplined I believe, but I would like to see the numbers to see if this is true. Section Five: General Comments I really did enjoy the Action Research process. As a math person, I like to have things very detailed and concrete. I like to feel like I am making progress, but I am never really settled until I know my status on a particular project or know my pattern in a particular behavior. By taking the time to get quantitative data, I was able to assess my heart in the area of discipline. I look forward to implementing more of these studies, not only in my personal life, but also in my profession as a teacher. The more time I spend getting concrete evidence about areas I need to improve, the more time I can spend planning how in improve in those areas.