Sleep is a nutrient. It reboots the brain and gives you a fighting chance at having a successful and productive day.
It’s also something that I’ve struggled with over the years. There’s nothing clinical wrong with me. To my knowledge I don’t have any significant sleep disorder. I’ve just always hated to go to bed early. Unfortunately I can’t say that I’ve done anything particularly productive with all of these extended night time hours over the years. I’ve had moments where I’m up late working on projects, but most of the time I haven’t been burning the midnight oil in pursuit of some lofty goal.
This has to change if I want to be the best ‘me’ I can be.
To that end, I’m creating a public sleep challenge for myself. My goal is to get five ‘cycles’ of sleep each night. One cycle is 90 minutes. (This is all outlined in Nick Littlehales book, ‘Sleep: The Myth of 8 Hours, the Power of Naps, and the New Plan to Recharge Your Body and Mind‘, which I highly recommend.)
In order to start my day with a workout I want to be up at 5 am. If you work back in 90 minutes that means being asleep by 9:30 pm. That means being in bed by at least 9 pm at the latest.
In order to track this I’ll take a screen shot of the time when I get up, and a screen shot of the time when I go to bed. I’ll post them to Instagram ala Jocko Wiilink. It won’t look as cool as having the picture of a watch, but it fits easier into my workflow. (This could change, as I have a Casio G-Shock on order that’s supposed to arrive in a couple weeks.)
You can follow my new ‘Inspire’ Instagram account here: @EatSleepBeMerry
I’ll check back in 30 days on June 24th, 2020 to let you know how things are going.
— Update: Tuesday, September 15th 2020 —
Unfortunately because of a family emergency I had to cut this challenge short just four days into it, and my schedule has been erratic the entire summer out of necessity. ‘The best laid plans of mice and men’ and all that.