Sleep and Frustration

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” -Thomas A. Eddison

It’s been a crazy last couple of days…

Let me first say that sleeping/waking schedules have never been my forte. I hated getting up as a kid (definitely not unique in this) and I hated being roused from any sleep whatsoever. Just prefacing this post with the fact that I am a terrible waker-upper. It’s a physical and metal battle for me to rouse myself from slumber.

That being said the last few days have been absolutely horrendous for the Everyman sleep schedule.

I was doing well. Actually fantastically. On Wednesday I nailed all of my naps, my core sleep went well, and I felt that I had finally gotten to the point where my body had acclimated to the new sleeping schedule I wanted. But alas it wasn’t to last. Later in the morning(?) at about 2 am on Thursday I fell asleep and just was in a coma until about 10 am. “CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP” That was about the gist of what I said upon waking.

It was really frustrating and a bit disheartening. I had really hopped that I had made the change and gotten myself onto the Everyman sleep schedule and that I was well on my way towards the Uberman. I tried to recover and take my schedule naps for Thursday but it didn’t work out either. With all the sleep that my body stole from my schedule I couldn’t go to sleep during the day at all. All my naps were just a frustrating 20 minutes of trying to will myself to sleep. Around 3:30 this morning I did manage to make myself fall asleep almost on time with my Everyman schedule and I have successfully woken at 7 as planned. But instead of hoping this was a one off occurrence I did notice that I was slowly making my way towards this tragic event.

In order to figure out what was wrong with the problem I am going to apply something that I learned playing Starcraft. Yes, a real world application from a faux world reality. So I guess I need to preface this as well.

There is a Starcraft 2 caster named Day[9] (real name Sean Plott) who does amazing things for the e-sports community and for Starcraft 2 in general. He has a show that he puts out almost daily called well… Day[9]tv and he does Dailys. He takes replays from the Starcraft 2 community and he analyzes them and explains to his wide viewer ship strategies for improving in the game of Starcraft 2. He does this with a good, well though out method and explains in a way that is relevant to his viewers. He makes things easy to understand and easy to remember.

In one of his most recent dailys (http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-309-the-right-and-wrong-way-to-learn-5229698) he went over a system on how to efficiently locate a problem in your game play and how to go about fixing it. It’s quite simple really.

• First: Identify your problem
• Second: What caused that problem
• Third: How do you fix that problem

Like I said: simple. So lets put this to use on my sleeping schedule

• First: Identify your problem — Falling asleep and oversleeping
• Second: What caused this problem — Not occupying my time as well as I should; I need to make sure that my waking hours are productive and filled with activities that keep both my mind and body in motion.
• Third: how do you fix this problem — Well, I need to do more things with myself. Watching Top Gear and other tv shows on Netflix just isn’t cutting the mustard.

So obviously I need to do more with myself than just passively watch things on the couch. Duh. This isn’t a hard to understand concept. In fact, I think that even minus the new sleep schedule this would be beneficial to me anyway. So I am going to compile a list of things that I want and need to do and plan on getting every item on it completed. There are two types of activities however that I need to keep in mind. There are one time activities (such a placing a phone call, or sending an email, etc etc) and there are recurring activities (like playing SC2, working on a new program, this blog, or working out). I need to make a balanced list of things to do each day that I can work on that allow me some variation so as not to work myself into a mindless state and to keep my body moving as well. This is an active choice and I must stay active in order to be successful in this endeavor.

So what am I going to do? Well I figure I should make a list of things I have always wanted to do but used the absolutely empty excuse of “I don’t have enough time to” to not do.

• Write a fantasy novel
• Create an app for the iPad/iPhone that helps live playing musicians
• Practice more guitar
• Practice more SC2 (That was the original intent of this whole shebang)
• Learn new languages (Spanish, French, and Arabic)
• Write more music
• Workout and get back into good health
• Become a proficient cook
• Learn to create and fix/maintain electronic gear (particularly guitar equipment)
• Get involved with an ultimate Frisbee team
• Record an album
• Perform live on a semi-regular basis

As you can see, these things aren’t things that improve or are completed in a day, or two, or heck even a few months on some of them. And this is something I must keep in mind. I’ve a bad habit of looking to the end goal of something and then turning around and seeing how much I have to do in order to get there and being overwhelmed and not completing whatever it was because of this. But not this time. I’m starting at the start line and working my way to the finish.

The second set of things to do are things that I should be doing everyday and that I need to do in order to keep myself awake and mentally aware.

• Do something physically challenging everyday (minus Sunday) — This fits into the long term goal of getting in shape, but it’s a daily occurence or at least needs to be. This is the way I need to think. “I need to workout today, just because it’s today.” not “I need to workout today because I HAVE TO LOSE WEIGHT AND LOOK LIKE AN A&F MODEL AAAAAAAAAHHHH GO GOGOGOGGOGOGOGGOGO!” I need to focus on the today/short term.
• Do some sort of mental exercise as well (outside of SC2). I’ll work on doing memory games and mental alacrity tests
• Chores
• Keeping up with people that are important to me
• Maintaining my electronic equipment
• Read something — journal, NPR article, news, a chapter or two in a new book. Just something.

These two lists intersect one another. The things I want to accomplish long term have to make it onto my to-do everyday list. I just need to remember that things don’t happen overnight and that it will take time and effort to complete and check things off of my long term goal list. But if I put those things onto a short list then I will feel more accomplished than if I just look at that long term list.

Right! I’ve got my lists! But how do I now work them into my schedule? Well, I guess that means planning out my days. This is also a difficult thing for me to do. I am great at making lists, and making schedules. But I’m not so keen on keeping them. But with some effort and a my smart phone reminding me what I need to be doing, I am going to attempt to make this all come together and work out. I will not bore you all with the minute by minute planning of my day.

 

Lets hope that this approach will keep me from not following my sleep schedule and will help me to be able to accomplish more with the time that I am trying to give myself.