Nick McIntosh

Consolidating

2009-07-08T09:14:00.004+10:00

I'm dumping blogger. Find the content that was here @
www.nickmcintosh.com.au

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 30

2009-04-30T13:31:00.005+10:00

Friday, day 30.

The End.

So I'm done. Friday was day 30 and I crawled out of bed at 7am for the 30th time in a row. It was actually touch and go for a few minutes as I got up, switched off my alarm and promptly got back into bed. This is one of the specific things I've been trying not to do and it surprised me a little later in the morning that I had actually allowed myself to get back into bed.

The instant take away is that 30 days may not be long enough in itself to re-program my morning routine, or alternately that I haven't been sufficiently vigilant enough in the mornings and enforce a consistent routine on myself.

So perhaps a review of the last month is now in order. The specific goal when I started this was to improve my sleeping habits, and I think I've done this for the last 30 days. However, whether or not this becomes a permanent change only time will tell.

The second and perhaps more important aspect of this experiment was to see how hard it was for me to make a small change and actually stick with it for an extended period time, especially when I know there will be aspects of it that I know will be unpleasant. This self discipline is something that I’m trying to develop little by little. Prior to start this experiment, I was quite anxious about whether or not I could actually do it for 30 days, but looking back now I feel that it was quite easy to accomplish. The up shot of this being that I’ve got a little bit more confidence in my ability to try and implement a change and stick with it.

The idea being that it is easier to make small incremental changes in life and stick with them than it is to try and make larger changes. If I wanted to improve my sleep, exercise, diet, work ethic and tried to do it all in one hit I know it wouldn’t last. But if I try slowly complete them one at a time it should be more successful as although there will be individual setbacks, I will have created a base on which to build.

There are a couple of practical issues as to getting up at 7am that I feel I must address. Saying I will get up at 7am everyday without exception will not fit with my lifestyle and there’s been several occasions during this 30 day period where its been extremely difficult as I’ve been out quite late or have been otherwise late to bed. So I’m not interested in making this a fixed permanent change because in the case of last night I wasn’t home until 2:30am and as such, forcing myself to get up at 7am is just dumb as clearly I haven’t had enough sleep. However what I am going to try and do is revert back to 7am the next day.

I’ve tried a bunch of different processes and techniques to optimise this experiment and if anyone else is looking to do something similar, here are the most important things that I’ve found:

1. If you’re trying to implement a change and are worried that you’ll try and back out of it later or start to let things slip, get your friends involved and set it up in such a way that you have constant positive re-enforcement.

2. Getting up in the morning and staying up is very hard for me and good intentions don’t seem to count for anything as my brain simply isn’t functional immediately after getting up. Instead of trying to ‘will’ yourself to make the change and getting frustrated when you inevitably get back into bed recognise what you’re doing and make it easier for yourself so you don’t have to think in the morning. In my case this encompasses a couple of things like putting the alarm clock in the bathroom so that I’m already in the bathroom without having to actually tell myself to go in there. Other things can include having a glass of water ready for the morning which should help to wake you up and picking your clothes out the night before. If you remove the act of having to think each process though like “go to kitchen, open cupboard, get glass, fill glass, drink” to just “pick up glass, drink” there’s a much greater chance of success as there’s less available failure points.

3. Identify problems and setbacks, analyse what’s causing them and experiment with solutions. For instance, if you find yourself waking in the middle of the night consistently, start by collecting data on each instance and see if you can spot a pattern. Does it happen at a similar time, do you need to use the bathroom, what did you eat / drink before bed etc. Then try and make small changes and see if it helps. In my case, I was waking a number of times during the night and the timing and frequency was inconsistent. But on Wednesday morning I was definitely woken by the garbage truck doing its rounds so that gave me the idea of earplugs.

Finally, prepared for an adoption period that can be much more difficult that you previously imagined and also expect psychological highs and lows but when this happens I’d strongly recommend picking up the phone and just having a chat to one of those friends whom you’ve already involved.

Thank you to everyone for taking an interest, leaving comments and fielding my early morning calls. I realise this is long but ultimately I’ve been writing it for myself as a record and I want to be as detailed as necessary. I’ve got some ideas for the next 30 days…

- Nick

2 May 2009

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Days 28 & 29

2009-04-30T13:17:00.002+10:00

Thursday (Day 29)
I'm almost done and I didn't even realise! I thought today was 27 or 28. I think I miss counted somewhere.

The last two days have been bad, mainly because I've broken my rule of not having caffeine after 5pm on both occasions and not getting to be early enough.

This morning was very tough and it was touch and go for about 1.5hrs where my body was screaming at me for more sleep. I'm very lucky that I got a phone call at 7:40am as I was about to resign myself to taking a morning nap.

Tomorrow, Friday 1 May 2009 is day 30 and I'll knock out an extended summary post then :)

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Days 26

2009-04-28T08:33:00.002+10:00

Inside the last 5 days and I'm feeling good!

Up and about with no problems and sitting back with a very good cup of coffee.

Yesterday's early morning exercise doesn't seem to have caused me any problems and the normal fatigue is missing from today which is nice.

There's not really anything that I want to add for the last couple of days other than the fact i'm looking forward to switching off the alarm for a couple of mornings and just sleeping for as long as my body wants to. Which could well be 7:01 am. We'll see.

At this stage I'm intending to continue getting up at 7am regularly but if I have a late night I'll make sure I get enough sleep and push the 7am wake up back accordingly with the view to getting back to normal the following morning. I'm not sure how well this will work but I think it might be better than forcing myself to get up when I still need more sleep.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Days 24 & 25

2009-04-27T11:41:00.002+10:00

Monday

I don't know where I am today. It's 11:30am and I'm having trouble focusing mentally.

The last couple of days have been ok, not great but not bad. Clearly I've caught up on some sleep as I've been in bed before midnight on both nights. Also when for a run this morning again @ 7:30am and I'm interested to see how much it takes out of me.

I'm into the home stretch now and I'm really glad that this is coming to an end.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Days 22 & 23

2009-04-25T08:34:00.002+10:00

Friday and Saturday
It's been a rough couple of mornings. The key reason being is that I haven't been able to get to bed early enough.

Thursday was a very long day, after the run @ 6am I was already behind the 8-ball and the fact that I decided to go out on the town thursday night exacerbated matters. I didn't get to bed until 1am and 6 hrs sleep after a big day wasn't really enough.

Friday was didn't help as again I went out in the evening to see friends and didn't get to bed until after midnight.

Subsequently right now (Sat 8:40am) I'm feeling a little 'out of it' and coffee I'm drinking doesn't feel like it's picking me up as much as normal. Today will be tough. I need to get to bed before midnight tonight.

So that's where I'm at. After a kick arse start to the week with a couple of effortless mornings that filled me with hope I've managed to screw it up a bit on the back half.

The thing that concerns me about this week is that obviously I expect my sleeping period to be flexible, whether that be a 6am start to go for a run or getting to bed late after a night out. These events are not uncommon in life and I think it's unreasonable to expect that I won't encounter them in the future. So what am I to do? Obviously if I get to bed late I'm going to need more sleep, so does that mean I skip the 7am wake up on occasion? The bigger problem is having to get up early on occasion, I want to be able to do this and feel good. I don't know how this will work.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 22

2009-04-23T08:03:00.002+10:00

I went for a run this morning. It hurt.

I got up just before 6am to meet a friend for a jog and it felt like I was back on day 2. Lethargic, slight headache, generally unpleasant.

The run and accompanied walking on my part took about an hour and I'll probably need a nap this afternoon to compensate as already at 8am I'm feeling a bit sore and tired. Perhaps I over did it.

I don't think I'll get up early again for the remainder of this experiment as it felt like everything was beginning to fall into place and if I start messing with my wake up time now I might screw it all up. The last 2 mornings have been good and I'd like to keep that up for the remaining days.

So no more early morning runs.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 21

2009-04-22T08:01:00.002+10:00

Another reasonably good morning, I don't think I'm as happy as days 19 and 20 but I'm still feeling pretty good.

I seem to have solved the urge to remove my earplugs in the middle of the night and I've been sleeping solidly with no more 3am wake ups.

I'm not really sure what to add at this point but a number of people have asked me "are you going to keep this up?". I don't think I'll be as vigorous in the future about getting up @ 7am as there as occasions where that isn't practical, especially if I've only made it to bed at 3 or 4am which does happen on occasion.

The bigger changes I'd like to take away from this is being able to fall asleep much quicker than previous and reducing the amount of time my body needs for sleep. Both of which I think have been successful. I'm now averaging less than 7 hours each night and feeling quite good about it.

I'm intending to start a bit of an exercise regime next month which may assist further in optimising my sleep as I'm currently only playing sport once per week but doing lots of walking. I've committed myself to doing a 10km race later in the year so I'd like to start running twice a week in preparation for this.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 18-20

2009-04-19T16:26:00.009+10:00

Day 18 Sunday

So I'm still having some problems sleeping right through of an evening. I seem to wake up around 3am, pull out my ear plugs and then go back to sleep. I want this to stop because inevitably some noise wakes me @ 5am.

The other point of note is that I had no problem getting up and out of bed this morning and felt great, all because I was doing something fun and exciting today. No lethargy and I probably could have skipped the morning coffee as well.

So perhaps the biggest cue is that to wake up early and want to get out of bed I need to believe the day will be exciting. Hrm tough one.

Day 19 - Monday
Wow. This morning feels good. If the last 10 days of this experiment feel as good as this morning I'll be delighted. Further more I'll probably keep getting up @ 7am every morning indefinitely.

I hoped out of bed without an issue after having 7hrs~ of sleep and managed to keep my earplugs in all night! There's a couple of possibilities as to why I slept so well.

1. Exercise. I went for a decent ride on the motorcycle and came back quite tired.
2. Mental focus in the afternoon. I spent about 90minutes focussed on a task from about 5pm-7pm and I think by having given my brain a 'workout' as well as my body sleep was effective.

Day 20 - Tuesday
Another good night's sleep and I'm feeling pretty sparky this morning. Not sure why exactly. Went for a walk before bed but didn't really stretch the mental legs very much yesterday.

Regardless of the cause, I'm very please with how this morning is going.

So that's 20 days down and only 10 to go. I'm quite pleased that I've kept this up

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 16-17

2009-04-17T08:04:00.005+10:00

Day 16 - Friday
After a late night and only about 5hrs sleep I'm looking forward to a nap this afternoon. My naps to date have not really been having the effect I'd like as I've been getting very little sleep during them. In the last few days I've felt like I'm starting to drift off during the 25 minutes but I'm hoping that a lack of sleep over night might help knock me out.

Day 17 - Saturday
The naps still aren't working as well as I hoped. I'm still not sleeping and when I get up after 25mins it takes me a few minutes to switch on again.

Last night was another late night, only 6~ hrs sleep and it caught up with me today. After getting up @ 7am this morning and going for a walk I was still sleepy and sat down on the couch which turned into lying on the couch and I didn't really move for another hour. I might have dozed off for a couple of minutes but I didn't feel like I was sleeping.

I moved back to my bedroom and spent the next 90 minutes in a blissful state of half sleep / dozing but even now, more than 2 hours later I'm still feeling a bit out of it for today. Zero motivation to do anything and I'm struggling to get my brain to focus. I'll try another nap this afternoon but I feel like this morning is the set back that had to happen.

I think the main reason for the reaction this morning was simply that I didn't get to bed early enough. I remember feeling drowsy at about 11pm but I pushed on until after 12am before I actually got into bed. This was clearly a mistake and something I should be paying more attention to.

The weirdest thing by far however is that this morning I can remember a dream I had which is extremely rare for me. I bumped into Tim Ferriss in a supermarket somewhere in Canada and said "I really enjoyed your book, thanks for writing it" and he gave me a business card and then about 20 photographers and media types appeared out of no where. It was odd.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 12-15

2009-04-13T08:19:00.006+10:00

Day 12 - Monday
This morning was again not good, it was raining, cold and a struggle to get up and stay up. But after about 1hr I was feeling pretty good and beginning to switch on and get in to the day.

Perhaps I just have to resign myself to the idea that the first 40mins - 1hr are going to be ugly. If can develop a plan to attack and get through that first hour each morning I think I can make this a habit. At the moment I'm not sure what I can do each morning, perhaps some exercise, perhaps schedule a phone call or a breakfast meet. But obviously I can't do those every morning. This needs some thought.

Monday night saw a reasonably later dinner as well as a big chunk of cake and I ended up making it to bed at 12:15am

Day 13 - Tuesday
This morning is by far and away the best I've felt so far. I slept with earplugs overnight and didn't wake up until 6:50am at which point I had another 10min doze before getting up. I did my usual walk around the block but instead of feeling like arse which is the normal case for some reason by 7:10am I was feeling great. I could have happily started jogging!

This is very strange. I wonder if it will happen again.

My euphoria faded over the course of the next 30mins back to normal operating levels but I didn't once feel like getting back into during this period. I'm now interested to see what happens tomorrow.

Day 14 - Wednesday
After just re-reading the above, I can say that it didn't happen again. This morning was another difficult morning and I think it's the closest I've been to just jumping back in bed for another couple of hours.

The good news is that I think I am making some progress as I'm sleeping better and I have cut down on the amount of sleep time to less than 7hrs per night which is good.

Mornings continue to be tough and I'm not sure I can hope to ever become one of these people who wake up, jump out of bed and just want to go go go.

Day 15 - Thursday (Half way!)
Seeing as I'm now at the half way point, perhaps a little reflection is in order.

I started this experiment with the idea of trying to fix my sleeping patterns and simultaneously convince my brain to stick with something for a period of time, even if i'm not having fun. My unconventional sleeping hours have been with me for quite a few years but I previously would never have admitted they were a hindrance or needed improving. I've been aware of all the tools and advice and research on how to improve sleep for a couple of years but haven't implemented any of it due to thinking "what if I try and then fail?". This mindset and associated reluctance to try different things where I risk failure is something I've been aware of for a while and need to work hard at to overcome. This sleep experiment may be a useful step.

So after 15 days what have I got? I'm certainly not done yet. I still hate mornings. The first hour after waking up on every day except one has been unpleasant. I've developed a routine for getting me through this but I need to include other people in this routine if I'm to get long term success I think.

I have reduced my sleep time a little. I'm now averaging less than 8hrs per night which I'm quite pleased with. I'd like to bring this down further but I think this will take more than 30 days to full optimise. Things that are likely to help are exercise and diet, both of which I'm largely ignoring at present.

I'm delighted to have tried earplugs and discovered how well they work and I'll continue using them indefinitely.

Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of this is the motivation to try and take action to improve my skills in other areas. I've already got plans for two more 'experiments' for lack of a better word which I will be trying over the coming months. The big key to making change and goal setting though seems to be engaging other people in what I'm doing. I have 7 or 8 people who have been taking turns fielding my wake up calls and continuallly asking me "how are you going?" which is INCREDIBLY useful for staying on track as if I back out and quit it feels like i'm letting multiple people down and I also lose a bit of 'face' with all of them.

I wonder how I'll feel @ the 30 day mark?

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Days 9-11

2009-04-10T07:49:00.012+10:00

Losing motivation
Not much is changing day to day so I'll start to consolidate these posts.

Day 8 afternoon / evening
After dinner I lost all motivation to do anything. I was sitting in front of the computer idley browsing nothing interesting and wanted to do something else, I had a list in front of my with my tasks for the week and I didn't want to do any of them either. Finally, there was nothing I could think of that I wanted to do that wasn't on my task list so I just sat, watching the screen.

This lack of motivation, moroseness or depression prompted me to look introspectively and I spent the better part of 6 hrs trying to pick my own brain apart and understand why I was feeling that way. The upshot is I went to bed shortly after 12am feeling pretty good again having identified a possible cause and some actions to try to remedy it over the coming weeks.

Day 9 (Friday)
I wore earplugs again and woke up un-aided at 6:30am, pulled them out and rolled over and went back to sleep for another 30 minutes before getting up @ 7. Awesome!

Managed to convince myself to go for a run as well which is odd for me so I'm beginning to wonder if a little bit of success with this sleep thing is motivating me to get out and do more.

Tried an afternoon nap again, didn't sleep again. I'm not really sure how long to keep trying this tactic as after 3 days I've not really had any success.

Made it into bed a bit after midnight.

Day 10 (woo double figures!)
Woke up twice over night once at 3am and again at 6am. Balls. I had ear plugs in until 3am but for some reason I removed them at that time. I don't know why.

This morning was very tough, after getting out of the house and doing my normal 10-15min walk I still could of happy jumped back into bed. Even after breakfast and another hour or so I still felt 'out of it'. I lied down on the bed for about 30mins about 10am and I think I could have easily nodded off for a couple of hours. I'm not sure if this is because I didn't get enough quality sleep over night or because I delayed my morning coffee a couple of hours but it's the first time that once I've been up and about I still felt like going back to bed.

Day 11 - This is hard.
Bleh. Woke up again last night, even with ear plugs in but I didn't have enough presence of mind to write down the time which is what I normally do. So my fail safe method of getting quality sleep is obviously not fail safe.

This morning for the first time I'm wondering if I've actually made any progress over the last 10 days at all. Mornings are still very hard and if I didn't have the motivation of not wanting to wash my friends cars I think I would have given up by now.

It's 7:40 on a rainy Sunday and bed is still overwhelmingly tempting. I think that I was hoping for at least some sort of positive change that I could see after 10 days but I don't feel like anything is better than before I started this experiment. My sleep time has decreased slightly but I'm certainly not bouncing around during the day with boundless energy. The enthusiasm of the first couple of mornings and they idea that "i'm making a change" has now worn off and instead all I'm left with is the thought "Should I bother?"

----

So I've just gone back and read Steve Pavlina's posts again to see if there's something I've missed or ignored. Perhaps a couple of things:

I think I'm falling asleep quicker / easier. This is a point of progress and something I hadn't realised. Prior to this experiment it took me a long time to nod off. After going to bed I would still be awake in 30 or 40 minutes on many many occasions but to my recall that hasn't happened while I've been getting up @ 7am. I think I'm falling asleep between 5 and 20 mins after going to bed.

The other point that I've just been reminded of is "Am I going to bed before I'm sleepy?". I haven't been paying enough attention to this over the last couple of nights. I've been going to bed when I'm tired and maybe bored of doing other things but I don't think I've been going to bed when I'm actually feeling drowsy. I need to pay more attention to this.

Regardless of all the above, the positives and the negatives I'm going to try and slog through this to the end of the month. I may not enjoy it but at least I can come out the other end knowing that I gave it a good try rather than chucking it in at day 11.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 8

2009-04-09T12:53:00.005+10:00

Earplugs!
Firstly, a couple of points from the end of Day 7.

I drank approximately 3L of water during the course of the day. I wasn't trying to consume an excessive amount and this sort of volume was quite comfortable. While I'm not sure if this is significant to how well I sleep, drinking plenty of water is important for general health and should give you more energy throughout the day than if you depend on coffee / tea / juice / softdrink (soda)

One side effect though that is mentioned in the articles I've read is that consuming any liquid right up until bed time will interrupt you sleep as your brain will wake you up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. So any 'health' benefits you may receive from drinking lots of water are in my opinion wasted because you quality of sleep is being effected. Subsequently, it's recommended that you stop consuming liquids up to 2hrs before bed time and make sure you use the bathroom before lights out. I think this timing of 2hrs is excessive but I agree with the concept that you should not be consuming a lot of liquids right before bed as you will have to get up to pee.

Also, I tried having another nap in the afternoon for 25 minutes. But I didn't sleep. I'm going to try and persist with giving myself time to have a nap and hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep once my brain realises that I'm giving it enough time to do so.

And now for the big break-through, EAR PLUGS!! Omfg!!! Best thing ever! I didn't wake at all during the night. Not once! I'm very very pleased with this. Now when I was thinking this through prior to going to bed I was quite concerned about whether or not I would actually hear my alarm in the morning with the earplugs in but I figured even if I didn't wake and slept too long it would only cost me a car wash and I would try something different.

But incredibly I woke up at 6:57am. My first reaction was panic as it was clearly light outside and I wasn't sure of the time but when I grabbed my wrist watch I was so pleased that I had to do a triple-take. As a result of this I'll keep using earplugs in the short term to see if I get consistently results and whether or not I over-sleep.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 7

2009-04-08T08:22:00.004+10:00

Yay! I've made it to the 1 week mark
Brief update as I don't have very much to add.

Yesterday I decided to try having an afternoon nap to try and increase my sleep efficiency and reduce the amount of sleep my body wants at night time. I tucked myself in at 2pm and set the alarm for 25mins later.

I didn't sleep.

I tried to relax and use my counting technique and let sleep come and did feel close to drifting off on a couple of occasions but at the end of 25mins my alarm when off and I got back up. I think this could take some practise. The reason I'm only going for 25 mins and not a longer period is that I don't want to enter deep sleep (SWS) where most of your brain shuts off as this takes much longer to cycle through. If you wake up in the middle of deep sleep it's suggested you'll feel much worse as your brain was switched off and now has to 'reboot', a process that might take 30mins.

25min naps should limit your body to only going so far as stage 1, stage 2 and maybe REM sleep and not stage 3 and 4 deep sleep. Wikipedia has a useful amount of detail on the different stages of sleep. 25mins with some practice should be long enough to refresh the brain and to prepare myself for the afternoon and evening, or so the theory goes. I'll play around with this idea I think for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.

The other main event of yesterday was playing touch football for 40~ mins during which I ran myself silly. Right now it's 12hrs later and my legs are still letting me know how unhappy they are.

So after all the exercise I ended up going to bed @ 11:15pm expecting a great nights sleep right through to 7am.

Wrong.

I woke up twice, once at 2am and again at 5am. I think the 2am wake up was a call to use the bathroom and the 5am wake up may have been caused by garbage collection in our street but I'm not sure. Regardless, this waking up in the night needs to stop and I'm considering wearing earplugs to see if it makes a difference incase it's external noises that are causing this.

So finally a couple of words about this morning. The 7am starts are still not something I'm enjoying and given the choice I think I'd roll over and go back to sleep for another couple of hours. I'm very pleased to say that i think calling someone immediately after waking up seems to be working as it forces my brain to engage and gets me through the first 10mins when i'm most susceptible to crawling back into bed. How this will work after this experiment I don't know as I'm sure my friends done want to be fielding my early morning phone calls indefinitely.

Secondly, this morning I noticed that it took me about 45mins for my brain to really 'switch on' and start processing the days tasks. Prior to this I was running on auto pilot preparing breakfast and each small thing I was doing was done quite slowly and with very little conscious thought. I'm not concerned about the duration of this 'switch on' period so long as I don't feel like getting back in bed.

So today marks 1 week. Thanks to everyone who's helping and offered encouragement so far, I really appreciate it.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 6

2009-04-07T12:06:00.006+10:00

Afternoon crash
Still going strong. But yesterday was a little bit odd.

At 10am I felt very edgy and my hands were physically shaking. No idea why as yesterday morning was no different to any other morning.

About 3:30pm after doing some strenuous exercise pushing and lifting things I was very hot and tired and laid down on the bathroom tiles for 20~ mins and then rolled myself on to my bed and spent another 30mins there. I'm not really sure if I slept or not but I was certainly very drowsy. When I got back up I wasn't feeling very with it.

The other thing I've noticed over the course of the last few days is that my water consumption has really gone up. I think I'm drinking at least a dozen glasses a day (330ml) which would put me close to 4 L per day. This seems like quite a lot but my guesses could be wrong. I'll record this starting tomorrow.

Finally, last night was excellent! I got to bed about 11:45pm and slept right through to 7am without waking! It took me longer than I would like to get to sleep but I'm very pleased that I slept right through.

So on to something more interesting...

Why am I doing this and what do I hope to achieve?
Over the last 10 years my sleep patterns have been extremely variable. It's not that I'm incapable of getting up at a certain time each morning, as there are instances where I'll happily jump out of bed at 6am if there's something fun to do but left unchecked and without this immediate motivation I'll quite happily sleep through to mid-afternoon.

During the years I was at college I got myself into a pattern of staying up for breakfast and then going to bed around 8am and then waking up for dinner at 5pm. At the time, my lifestyle allowed me to do this with no real negative consequences. I didn't have a job and uni hours were 'flexible'.

However when I got a job and people expected me at a desk by 9am things got harder. My body still wants to stay up to 5am but the rest of the world does not take to kindly to fitting into my lifestyle. I have to fit with the rest of the world if I want to get paid. So getting up in the morning for the last 3 years has been a persistent challenge and come holidays or weekend I'd immediately stay up late and then not get out of bed until 11am.

So while my past sleeping habits have been irregular I've still been able to fit in with the expectations of society - I just haven't enjoyed it and if you expected me to be thinking straight at 9am you'd better get me an extra large coffee.

So if I've been coping for a couple of years on my existing method, why change stuff now? There's a couple of reasons. Number 1 is that I haven't enjoyed getting out of bed and mornings have been my enemy for these years and I've concluded that it may be easier to try and change me rather than trying to convince the rest of the world to stay in bed a little longer. I realise that I have to be up and about in the morning to get things done and that I need to find a way to enjoy doing this. Getting up before 9am will probably be a necessity for the immediate future if i'm to really excel in what I'm doing.

Number 2 is that I want more efficient sleep so I don't have to do it so much. While I love sleeping and being warm and cosy in bed it takes up a lot of time and ultimately limits how much of everything else in life you have time for. I'm more interested in being awake and making progress than sleeping. So after doing some research, a good way to start on this path seemed to be to set a consistent wake up time each morning as an initial sleep and then optimise from there.

Number 3 is that I've dedicated the immediate future (next few years hopefully) to taking action and trying hard to reach my goals. At the moment I lack self-discipline and subsequently self-confidence in being able to make changes in my life. My usual pattern has been:

Decide to change something
Make a really impressive spreadsheet / table / graph to track my progress and guide me
Start!
Give up after 2 days when I get bored.

This is not good and is something that I need to fix. I'm starting with my sleeping patterns because I think it's achievable in the short term, I can see immediate results and it will enable me to slowly build a little bit of self discipline and then build confidence that I can stick to something and that I can actually get to a point where I start to enjoy the change I've made. This little sleep experiment may be the first of many things I work on this year.

Now for what I hope to get out of it?
Well that should be pretty obvious if you've just read the above.

By the end of this I want to get up @ 7am by default and actually like doing it
Give myself time to achieve more each day
Improve sleep efficiency
Build self discipline and subsequently generate confidence in my ability to be disciplined

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 5

2009-04-06T08:26:00.004+10:00

Once again I'm up and about at 7am...

Yesterday was good, after about 9hrs sleep I felt good all day and even skipped my afternoon coffee.

Here's the breakdown:
Exercise: Swim! from about 2:45pm - 4pm

Food: Beef Thai green curry with rice noodles and veg @ 6pm, early dinner as swimming left me starving

Activity: Post dinner watched a movie, Death at a funeral (it's good!) and muddled around until about 10:30pm. Even though I was tired quite early I didn't really feel sleepy and I didn't want to go to bed too early and subsequently wake up @ 3am. I had a very good sleep the previous night and I don't want two big sleeps back to back. I'm looking for efficiency here as well as discipline.

So I hit the pillow at about 11pm but woke up at least three times before 7am. Not good. I want to sleep right through to 7am and the fact that I'm waking up consistently in the middle of the night bothers me.

My morning routine has expanded to include a walk around the block first thing as I'm finding that after about 10mins of being up I really want to get back into bed. So at that 10 min point my bed is no where in sight and I just have to keep walking. By the time I get home I've called someone and worked out what to have for breakfast.

So back to this sleep quality stuff. A quick google has pointed me to this site on Quality Sleep
which has a number of articles on how you can alter different variables and the results you can expect to get. Interestingly, 1 article suggests that you may be able to train yourself to need less sleep. I think I'll try and add a couple of the suggestions to this experiment and see if they help / hinder me. Of particular note is that almost all the articles suggest that the adoption period can take from 7 to 10 days. Patience is not something I'm good at.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 4

2009-04-05T08:19:00.003+10:00

This morning is the most tempted I've been to go back to bed. Luckily I was about 300m from my house when this wave of "I want to be warm and cosy" swept over me.

I'm beginning to get a technique for dealing with mornings and its simply "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE". Even if it's only a 10 minute stroll, it's immediately after getting up in the morning that I want to turn around and jump back in bed. If I'm already 50m down the road when I feel like this it's pretty hard to justify turning around and going back.

At the end of the 10mins walk I had managed to decide what I wanted for breakfast so that became the next task and over breakfast I worked out what I wanted to do next and so on until the urge to get back in bed goes away.

Yesterday was pretty brutal. After a big night on Friday night and less than 5 hrs sleep I was fully expecting to be quite 'out of it' mentally for the most of the day, and I was. I felt sleepy most of the day but I managed to avoid an afternoon nap, get plenty of walking in and then get to bed a little before 10pm

Food: ate quite late @ 7:30pm, in retrospect I think I ate more than I needed to.

Sleep last night was good, I had no problem falling asleep but woke up twice during the night, once at about 5am and again just after 6. I don't know why I keep doing this but I want it to stop. I'm going to try and normalise the time I go to bed and how long I sleep for over the next few days and see what effect it has.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 3

2009-04-04T08:19:00.005+10:00

It hurts
Today is going to be tough.

After less than 5 hrs sleep last night my brain is screaming at me this morning to go back to bed. I'm trying hard not to listen to it but on several occasions I've had to catch myself from just going and lying down for a minute.

Typing is not easy and I'm having to triple check every sentence in case I just leave something out.

Yesterday, day 2, was pretty good. I had a useful amount of energy and was able to get plenty of stuff done.

Had a coffee with breakfast and a Redbull about 2pm but managed to avoid stimulants for the rest of the day.

Exercise: Did a decent amount of walking probably close to 2hrs all up

Food: Dinner went from about 7:30 to 11pm but unlike the previous night it was quality not quantity and left me feeling very good and satisfied

Activity: Post dinner I didn't get home until nearly 2am after spending a couple of hours with friends. I knew in advance it would probably be a late-ish night but I was hoping to be home much closer to midnight. I really only have myself to blame.

Sleep came quickly but for some reason I woke up at 5:40am briefly before my alarm went off @ 7am

This morning I'm pretty out of it. Called Mike on time and he reminded me to just get up and do something, so I went for a walk for 30mins and it did seem to help get me over the initial hump. It's now getting close to 9am and I haven't had my morning coffee yet so I think the worst of it is behind me.

The internal debate I'm having is whether or not to take a nap this afternoon to compensate for the lack of sleep last night. I'm sure by the time 2pm rolls around I'm going to be feeling very lousy but my current train of thought is that I should just push through and then go to bed a bit earlier, perhaps around 10pm.

Mike also sent through a list of "10 geeky tricks for getting out of bed". There's some decent suggestions in the mix and it's worth a read if you're trying to identify things that will make getting up in the morning a bit easier. I particularly like #2 and #3.

So that's where I'm at. Later in the week when my brain has gotten over the shock of what I'm forcing on it I'd like to write a bit about why I'm actually doing and what benefits I hope to get. But right now I think a coffee is in order.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 2

2009-04-03T08:37:00.004+10:00

I feel better this morning. No drowsiness or head spin but not a lot of energy. But first a quick recap of yesterday.

Yesterday was not particularly pleasant. I felt like I was in a fog pretty much the entire day with occasional periods of headache-like symptoms. I was expecting to feel pretty bad on occasion throughout this experiment but I was not expecting it on day 1.

I'm trying to monitor my caffeine intake while I'm doing this and limiting myself to 2 caffeine based beverages per day as a maximum and nothing after 5pm. Yesterday I had a coffee with breakfast and a very strong cup of tea at about 2:30pm to try and keep me going. Without the tea I think I would have struggled to get back up again after my second afternoon's "sleep practise" session.

Basically I felt very average all day.

Here's a breakdown of last night:

Exercise: None, it was raining all day.

Food: Had a late dinner at about 8:30pm at a mexican restaurant and ate too much. It was basically a big pile of shredded chicken, sauce, corn chips and some lettuce and a mass of cheese. This probably wasn't a good idea and by 10pm I was regretting finishing the meal.

Activity: I got home from dinner @ about 10pm, switched off the computer about 10:30 and immediately headed for bed. My head was aching and I think I would have been in bed by 10:50 at the latest. I can't remember how long it took me to get to sleep so it must have been reasonably quick.

I woke up at 5:10am and felt like I could get up and start the day but I decided against it and instead had some water and went back to sleep until 7am.

So that brings us to this morning. I'm feeling pretty good! It's coming up on 9am and I've already banged out this post and walked to woolworths for breakfast supplies. Today I'd like to go for a decent walk for an hour or so and tonight could be difficult as I'll be out on the town for a few hours and getting to bed before midnight will be unlikely.

Mike is getting a call from me @ 7am tomorrow and I think I'm going to struggle a bit. He could be the first to benefit from this experiment in the form of a cash wash.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - Day 1

2009-04-02T07:41:00.005+10:00

Well I'm here and 7am was quite easy. Andrew got a call from me just after 7am and pretty much everything went to plan.

It's 7:40am and I've devoured some brekky, made a coffee and I'm going to try and kick on with today's list of things to do. I've still got a bit of brain fog and I'm yawning occasionally so I'm not 100% "with it" yet - typing isn't flowing particularly well.

By the end of this I want to be up at 7am and feeling good, no drowsiness, no lethargy, just ready to kick the day's arse.

I want to say a big thanks to everyone who has committed to helping me achieve this. The key thing that I think will make or break me is how seriously I take the "accountability to other people" aspect. What I've done is organise to call 1 of my friends each morning just after 7am to prove I'm up and about. If I miss a call I'll wash their car / clean their bbq or bathroom or something equally labour intensive. I know a couple are hoping for a clean car from day 1.

Perhaps a little recap of yesterday is in order, in case it will allow me to identify any recurring factors that impact the morning after.

For some reason on announcing this little challenge to the world yesterday afternoon left me excited and pumped with adrenalin. I think I could have gone under 10s for the 100m. Definitely the idea of really getting this worked out left me feeling like I could do anything. Infact I was ready to announce subsequent goals and add addition aspects and targets to this 30 day trial like exercise and diet and blah blah blah. But I'm glad I didn't. While I'm certainly interested in monitoring and potentially improving those aspects of my life I'm going to force myself to ignore them for the time being and only make small incremental changes rather than trying to change everything at once.

So here's a break down of last night:

Exercise: I went for a walk last night for about 90 minutes between 8:40pm~10:10pm

Food: banana at 8pm, meat pie @ 10pm, choc cake @ 10:40pm

Activity: Switched off the computer just after midnight and tried to start relaxing and switching off the brain. I think I was in bed by 12:40am. I was trying to pay close attention to my body and see if there where any obvious changes to indicate my brain was getting tired. I did experience a "brain fog" from about 11pm onwards but it didn't really effect my ability to send emails and generally operate. I had a couple of big yawns at 12:40am and decided that was a good enough sign to try sleeping.

Sleep did not come though. I went through the routine I had practised of getting in bed, getting comfortable and clearing my mind but after counting to 183 I noticed a "clicking" noise coming from just outside my window which I was unable to block out of my sphere of consciousness. So after 10mins of investigation and the removal of a plastic bag from underneath a drippping pipe it was back to bed.

I tried counting again but I can't remember how far I got but I remember making the conscious desicion to let my mind wander this time but not concentrating on anything in particular. I think I drifted off after another 10-15mins. I'd guess that would be around 1:30am

My sleep was broken a couple of times and I remember gaining half consciousness and wondering why I wasn't asleep before promptly falling asleep again. This 'quality' of sleep thing is something I'd like to improve as part of this experiment.

So there you have it. Day 1. I'll do another practise session later today and sort out who to call tomorrow and Saturday morning. If you need a clean car I reckon Saturday morning would be a good bet.

Getting up @ 7am sleep log - 1st practise session

2009-04-01T18:44:00.005+10:00

So I just finished my first practise session of trying to get up with an alarm clock. It was weird. Very weird.

This is the method I'm following if you're interested

What I did was setup my room up like I would if I was normally going to bed which means fan on, blinds closed, all lights off.

Then I set me up like I'm going to bed which is clothes off, pj's on, and actually getting into bed and in the position that I normally sleep in.

Then I set the alarm on my phone that I normally use for 5 minutes time and put it in the ensuite

Then I tried to sleep. Or more specifically I went through the mental process of clearing my mind of distractions. This is something I'm extremely bad at as I normally have about 20 things on my mind like what I need to do tomorrow, or what I did today, or running over a new idea I've had... anything but switched off.

So I decided to count. Slowly in my head pronouncing each syllable as clearly as possible, focusing only on the pronunciation and the next number.

I think i got to 10 before I started thinking about twitter. Fuck. So I had to make the conscious effort to stop thinking about that and go back to counting.

At the end of the 5 minutes I'd reached 112 and had battled down many distractions when my alarm went off.

The process I'm going to try to implement at this point is as follows:

Get up
Get out of bed
Go into the bathroom
Turn off the alarm
Wash my face

Hopefully by forcing myself to get out of bed to stop the noise and making me actually go into the bathroom which is normally the first thing I do of a morning I'm less likely to head back to bed.

So that is 1 rep. I then reset my alarm for 5 more minutes and did the whole thing again.

6 times.

The hardest part throughout the 30 minutes was to stop myself from thinking about other things while I was counting. I had a bunch of ideas about how to make myself keep the routine going and I started making a list after each repetition of what I had thought of so that I could come back to them later. Basically this meant that I could allow my brain to relax as nothing would be forgotten.

So that's it. The first practise session out of the way and I'm going to do it again tomorrow and probably each day for the first week to really get the habit embedded in my sub-conscious.

First post

2009-04-01T18:01:00.000+10:00

Welcome

If you're reading this you probably know me, Nick McIntosh. This might become my personal story of what I'm doing and thinking or it may go to nothing after 1 post (this has happened before).

The reason for starting this is that I'm committing myself to trailing waking up at 7am everyday and trying to improve my sleep habits for the next 30 days.

I have ripped this directly off Stevepavlina.com who has written extensively on getting up early and its benefits and is a writer I've been following for quite some time with interest but not with the corresponding action on my behalf to actually see if what he recommends works.

This month I'm going to try it. Seriously.

This 'taking action' is something that I have decided to focus on this year as I believe I'm far to passive / reactive in many aspects of my life and I believe that if I want to achieve my goals and dreams in life I'm the only one that is going to do the work to get me there. So while this may seem like a small start, at least it is a start and it will hopefully give me the self-discipline and confidence to try other things.

So how am I going to get up at 7am? If you want the detailed method I suggest you read the original piece by Steve about "How to become an early riser" and "How to get up right away using an alarm clock".

Specifically, I will:

set my alarm for 7am and try to get up at 7am every day for the next 30 days starting Thursday, April 2, 2009.
practised my getting up routine daily for the first week
setup a new profile on my mobile called "sleep" to block all incoming calls to my mobile during sleep time
go to bed no later than 2am and stop using the computer a minimum of 30mins before this time
pay attention to my body and try to recognise sleepiness symptoms
make sure I have down time prior to sleeping
try to gauge how long it takes me to fall asleep and develop a method for 'deactivating' my brain when my head is on the pillow

... and finally... and something I think will ultimately make or break this,

make myself accountable to other people, who will help keep me on track.

Lets see what happens.