Review of the past fortnight

Am rather tired tonight, probably because I had a late-ish night last night (11pm – went out to dinner with my in-laws). Since starting the experiment, I have found that I am pretty tired by around 9 o’clock most nights, and am usually in bed by 10pm. The funny thing is that, before the experiment, I would have been tired by 9:30ish, and definitely thinking about bed by 10, but because I didn’t have the incentive of the 5am alarm, would push myself to keep doing things (reading mostly, sometimes watching tv, or talking with M) and would be very tired by the time I went to bed, at anytime between 11 o’clock and midnight. The alarm would then go off at 6am anyway, but I would only get out of bed at 7am or so. Calculating these hours, I am probably not getting much less sleep than I was, pre-experiment, and am probably getting a little more, because I am more careful about going to bed at a reasonable hour.

Now, I am up and out of bed when the alarm goes off at 5am, and will have read or done some writing, pondered the coming day (or the previous day’s events), had breakfast, and gotten ready by work by around 7:45am. Some days I am more tired during the day than others (e.g. if I have a later-than-usual night), or if I have been doing really tedious tasks all afternoon – but this is no different to my pre-experiment days. Thinking about it, my energy levels were very similar pre-experiment, and were in fact sometimes worse because I was feeling quite harassed. That feeling that you are just barely keeping up with the flow of information and tasks is exhausting in itself, without factoring in the actual doing. Funnily enough, I think that because I have had this extra time to myself and have not had to rush around in the mornings, I have been somewhat more organised, definitely more relaxed, and hopefully less reactive.

The timing of starting the experiment at the same time as I was beginning to investigate RSS and blogs and writing my own blog, as well as needing to focus on the exercises for the leadership course I have been attending, has been perfect (quite unplanned though). I love having the extra time. Being able to think to myself, during the course of a day, “I want to think about that some more”, or “I want to read more about that”, and to actually have the time to do it, has made me feel very positive about things. All this despite all the slightly worrying, less-than-positive things happening at work, and all the usual demands I (we) all have to cope with everyday.

I will acknowledge that it is quite a bad time of year to getting up at 5am – it is so cold in the mornings at the moment. M thinks I am slightly insane, I think! Still, I can’t wait until summertime when the sun rises at 5am and I am up to enjoy it!

Categories: experiments