Posted by Just saw another short clip of helpful Covid stay-at-home advice: follow a routine!
I do and I have. And it can be very helpful, but maybe shaking it up now and then is what I actually need.
That’s what I want to try right now. Can I get some sleep now and then wake up in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning and do my work?
On the one hand, seems like a very bad idea. If my sleep is interrupted in the wrong way, I’ll be useless. Will be a huge waste of time. And I might not even get what I need done and will need to reschedule a team meeting.
On the other hand… I think it could be fun and a nice change of pace to work in the middle of the night. Envisioning that I wake up motivated and refreshed after taking a nap or maybe even getting 3-4 hours of sleep. Then I bust out what I need to and either get done early enough for a 20 minute nap before work. Or at least get done on time, get through my meetings and take an afternoon nap.
I did this in college all the time. But I was younger then and more motivated. Deadlines and expectations at work aren’t nearly as rigid and as high as they were in school. So I don’t feel the same need to deliver (sad, but true). What I may be going for here is to try and produce that same kind of deadline rush by working at a ridiculous time.
And I have done some of my best breakthrough work at 2am in the past. But that was staying up working into the night. And I was destroyed the next day from lack of sleep. What if I go to sleep now at 20:30? And then wakeup and do the things?
I’ll set my alarm for 4:30 am, but hope I wake up earlier.
And that whenever I wake up… I’m refreshed and conquer my work.
Update:
Woke up at 2:20 am. Refreshed? Not exactly. But I told myself I wanted to get up in the middle of the night and my body came through and did it. And I am so awake that I wouldn’t be able to just drift off to sleep. So let’s get work done and hope my little switch-it-up experiment doesn’t give me an insomnia habit.
4 am. 90 minutes. Got all of the “setup” work done. Clearer path and plan. Set it up. Next, knock it down. First want a bath and a nap.
So… not exactly a success. Once other people are in the office… interruptions galore. Didn’t get as much done as I had wanted. And in addition to interruptions, I underestimated the amount of work. Either that or put too much time into it. Couple people on the team also had a conflict.. Pushed the meeting another day.
Good thing: it’s now 19:20 and I still have plenty of energy. Did a mixed plyometric and free weight workout and now biking and typing. Definitely don’t think cause is interrupted routine. I think this energy is from my newest experimental solution to improve my ability to get things done. But interrupted sleep didn’t harm it.
ThoughtsForBots 