These days, for many, life has become more unstructured. We move from our beds, perhaps to breakfast and not far beyond, start work on whatever desk/kitchen benchtop/dining table our home office so happens to be. We can wake up later, go to bed later. We can, go with the flow.
I’m here to make one suggestion. Wake up early.
I think I’ve mentioned before that from the age of 12, I’ve been waking up at 5am. Originally, that was with an alarm clock and because I was a paperboy. These days, I often spontaneously wake up earlier than that, sometimes at 3:30am, sometimes at 4am, less often after 5am.
At one stage of my life, I was so busy between work and family, I decided to segment my day into three parts rather than two. These comprised – wake at 2am. Work/education from 2am – 7am. 7am – 8pm – kids/family and other usual daily work. 8pm – 2am – sleep. This allowed me to basically fall asleep when I put the kids to bed. Sure, I often fell asleep whilst reading them a bedtime story or telling them a story from my childhood. After all, I was buggered. They would shake and nudge me, sometimes pry my eye open. Quite a few of my stories were pretty bad. Hopefully they gave me points for effort! But the day worked.
Getting back to the point, simply put, I would encourage everyone to be an early riser. If you wake up really early, by a particular time of the evening, you essentially are so tired, you will fall asleep. That may not be, and may not need to be by 8pm, but it could be by 9pm, or 10pm, with no melatonin, alcohol or any other drugs needed. If you work nightshift, you’ll have to do some thinking to work out the equivalent regimen.
In general, these days, I think I sleep for about 7.5 hours, and feel refreshed. Still, by being awake well before 5am, I just seem to get so much more done. And, I’ve accepted my body’s ebbs and flows. Therefore, on the days, for whatever reason, I wake up earlier at 2:30am, or whatever it may be, I don’t fight it. I just get up, feel lucky to have been given a random dose of energy and start doing something. By that night – I’m buggered, hit the hay early and some sort of clock resets. And sure, occasionally, I sleep in, but it’s pretty rare.
So, there you have it, what I do. And, whilst I’d accept what I do/have done may well not be for everyone, the general point is, despite any opportunity to sleep in, don’t do it. It’s generally much more useful to wake up early, rising before dawn. Indeed, as corny as the saying goes, there is much truth to it –
“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” – Poor Richard’s Almanack, by Benjamin Franklin, 1732. And of course, I’m sure Benjamin would agree that this includes women.
