A little place of calm

These are the last few hours of my 30-day trial of various changes to my life. For the last 30 mornings i have got out of bed and got going at 7am consistently. I have completely cut out coffee, i have gone to bed at a decent time and i have prioritised my evenings more effectively, much reducing the amount of time i spend watching television.

By consequence i've felt a lot happier, more engaged, more enthusiastic to do my job and do it well. My weekends have seemed more structured. I've felt emotions that seem somehow more authentic, and i've looked forward to my bedtime, enjoying a good read in bed. I've often woken up before my alam sounds in the morning, and enjoyed dozing in bed listening to the birds and the weather. I've given up chocolate almost by accident, and i've no intention to start eating it again. I've come to absolutely love Rooibos Tea! :)

Several people have asked me: what happens next? Well, ideally more of the same. I spent 30 days exercising my self-discipline, forcing myself to follow a routine in order to establish a habit. I'd like to think it won't be difficult to keep it up now. I used twitter extensively, tweeting every morning that i'd got up on time. Some of my followers will be glad to hear that i won't be doing that anymore! Twitter is a great motivational tool, but i no longer need it. I think it would feel weird now to stay in bed after my alarm has sounded.

So the experiment has been a great success and it has set me up to continue the good habits that i've established. Thank you everyone for your encouragements during the past month. I've really appreciated it!

So it's been 10 days since i started implementing the changes to improve my life. I think it's time for a little progress report. On the whole it is going incredibly well, better than i even imagined.

The caffeine withdrawal symptoms were horrible. I stopped drinking coffee on Sunday 18th July. By Monday evening i had a heavy headache, not particularly painful but giving a compressing feeling on my brain, making me feel fuzzy and slow-thinking. Then i threw up. Just a little bit at first, but later on i threw up really horribly and painfully. I never imagined that i could get sick from lack of coffee! Funny, it explains why i've sometimes been sick when i go away to visit people. Looking back now, it's obvious it was the coffee withdrawals that caused it.

On Wednesday and Thursday i felt as if my natural emotions were returning. I began to feel a genuine sense of calm and happiness, quite unlike anything i'd felt for a long time. By Friday i was positively bubbling with wellbeing. It was amazing.

Going to bed on time has been quite easy. Without caffeine, i've felt ready for bed at the right time. I feel a genuine tiredness without the caffeine giving me an artificial sense of being awake. Some days i really look forward to bed time. With my routine, i've found i prioritize my evenings much more effectively. Knowing that i'm going to get ready for bed at 10pm means that i am much less inclined to watch television, putting off other things until later. I'm also delighted for the opportunity to read in bed, now that i've made time for it.

Getting up has not been a problem. The last 10 days i've been up at 7am sharp. I've written down my whole routine, so i do the same thing every day, including weekends. I found it useful and enjoyable to go out for a walk on Saturday and Sunday morning, at the time i'd normally walk to work. It keeps my routine consistent and means i've kick-started my day, getting useful things done early, and getting a bit of exercise.

A completely unexpected side-effect of giving up coffee is that i also seem to have given up chocolate, quite by coincidence! I guess i'm on quite a healthy living trip, so i felt if i was going to cut out caffeine, i ought to do it properly … but it's amazing how i've not even had any desire or craving for chocolate. Every time i've given up chocolate before it's been massively difficult and a big deal.

All in all, i'm feeling a whole lot better than before. My enthusiasm has returned, my lust for life is alive and well. I'm sleeping better, performing better during the day, enjoying my work again. I'm fairly sure this will prove to be the best thing i did all year! Maybe next i'll even find a desire to do some serious exercise! :D

Today i have made a few decisions, a few changes to make my life better.

What is wrong with my life? As it happens, a few things, but these are the most notable problems that i've known for a while and didn't have the courage to admit to:

1. I watch too much television
2. I stay up too late
3. I find it hard to get up in the mornings
4. I rely too heavily on coffee

Recently i've felt i've not been getting enough sleep, i feel tired and irritable a lot of the time, i have little motivation to do things, and i am useless without coffee. Caffeine disrupts my sleeping patterns, so the problem is cyclical and self-perpetuating.

So a few things have to change, and i think i've found the answers in Steve Pavlina's blog. Firstly, i'm going to give up coffee. I don't want to be controlled by caffeine, so i will switch to rooibos tea, which i love!

Secondly, i am going to practise getting up on time. I literally mean practise. Something Steve mentions that i've never considered before is practising getting up when you're already awake. You get undressed, get into bed, set your alarm for 5 minutes time and then practise getting up straight away, having a wash, getting dressed. Then you do it all again. It sounds funny, but it makes sense. Willpower alone is not good enough. Even with the best intentions, 7 o'clock aimee makes the wrong choices. My foggy brain gets confused and tries its very best to convince me to stay in bed. Therefore i need to train my subconscious brain to get up automatically.

Thirdly, i'm going to get up at the same time every day. I will get up at 7 o'clock for the next 30 days. This is something i've often said i will do; i've done it before and really felt the benefits. With proper training to get up straight away, i can make it work.

Fourthly, i'm going to get to bed at a good time. I want to be in bed at 22:30, reading a book until i feel tired and ready to sleep. I will turn off my phone to avoid the temptation to check twitter and emails in bed. I intend to be asleep by 23:30. To prepare for this i must do the washing up at 21:00, and start getting ready for bed at 22:00.

This is going to take discipline, but discipline is like a muscle: the more it is used, the easier it will become. Lately my discipline has been underused, which is why i've been finding things so difficult. I look forward to the benefits of discipline, having more time to read, watching less television, getting to work earlier to prepare for the day, having more energy, breaking my addiction to caffeine.

So with all that written down (so that you can all hold me to it!) off i go to practise getting up when my alarm goes off! :)

I feel like a Life Review is in order. But i'll keep it short. [Edit] no i didn't! It's kinda long!

(more…)

I think i had about four sleepwalks last night. Not particularly scary ones; sort of adventurous ones. I kept seeing little letters in envelopes, and when i opened them they contained a little task. Like move something from one side of the room to the other. I dread to think the state i might have left the bedroom in!

There was one where i saw a letter over my partner's side of the bed. So i got up to fetch it and then i couldn't find it. I got my phone because it has a light-up screen, and i was shining it around the bed, looking for this stupid letter. Arrgh. It's so annoying. I think i might have to get some sleeping tablets or something to stop me from doing it. I have suffered from sleepwalks and nightmares my whole life, but it is particularly bad at the moment for some reason.

In other news, somebody from MyChores asked if i want to do a bit of professional programming work for their company. I turned them down. I said i don't have enough time and i just do MyChores for fun, like a hobby. It's a shame though, because i kind of like the idea of going self-employed and doing freelance programming work. But the process of turning that idea into reality is too big for me to contemplate at the moment.

There is something about sleep – i'm never quite satisfied with it. I'm always looking for ways to improve my quality of sleep, because i don't think i've yet found my optimum sleep pattern. So alternative sleep patterns interest me greatly, although many of them seem impractical with my job, travelling, wanting to spend time with my partner, etc.

I came across the 28-hour day yesterday in an amusing comic that i like to read. Like so many sleep patterns, i love the theory! I always think 24 hours in a day seems slightly too short, and sleeping just six times in a week, for 9 hours at a time, sounds a nice idea! But i tried to map it out on a spreadsheet and i just can't make it work, no matter how i fiddle it. I tried four days of 27 hours followed by two days of 30 hours. That didn't work. I hoped only to go to work four times a week, missing out Mondays altogether. That didn't work either. You just end up sleeping all of Sunday, which is less than ideal.

Hmm. If only we could just slow down the Earth's rotation so it takes 28 hours! ;)

I've often flirted with the idea of trying polyphasic sleep. Actually, i could joke that i am already a polyphasic sleeper since i usually get a 20-minute nap on the train to and from work. I like to read for 20 minutes and sleep for 20 minutes. It works really well, very refreshing! I'd really love to try the Uberman schedule of 30 minutes sleep in every four hours … but that is just insanely impractical the way my life is at the moment, and for the foreseeable future!

So, to consider the more feasible sleep patterns …

Last year i tried getting up at 6am every single day, including weekends. The idea was to train my body to know when to get up, therefore it could calculate for me how much sleep i required. All i had to do was listen to my body to know when it's time to go to sleep. Unfortunately i found i am very good at ignoring my body when it's telling me to go to sleep!! So i had to go back to having a set bedtime. In theory it was 10pm, though in practice i often missed it.

Whilst on holiday i had a lot of sleep, but i was surprised to find it didn't really alleviate my tiredness throughout the day. It seemed the more sleep i got the more i felt i needed. Just recently i've heard that the optimum is 7 hours sleep, not 8. So currently i am trying to get exactly 7 hours every night. The plan is to be in bed by 11pm and read or listen to music until 11:30pm. I want to relax myself enough so that when the light goes out i fall straight to sleep. I get up at 6:30am, and will continue to do this at weekends. Getting up early is good for me.