Tag: Sleep

The Motivation of Failure

Last week, I was passed over on a job opportunity for a more qualified candidate.  Such is life, and I don’t bear any ill-thoughts for the results of the job search.  I’m disappointed, but not soured by the experience.  It’s an opportunity to learn and grow, and I find that more important to focus on than to give in to a fixed mindset of self-pity.

After the feelings of sadness ebbed, I found myself experiencing a different feeling – motivation.  This has happened a few times in my life, and it was strange to be reaquainted with it.  There have been a few critical moments in my life where I failed at something important, and that failure created a fire within that motivated me.

It happened when I climbed Mount Kenya in 2007 after I failed my summit in the summer of 2003 of a mountain in Alberta whose name I’ve forgotten.

It happened when I joined the Campus Response Team and became a Coordinator after I failed twice to be a residence don.

And it happened again last week when I wasn’t selected for the job.  The self-critical sadness was overtaken by a motivation to go to the gym.

As I’ve written previously, It’s been a while since I’ve visited the gym.  According to my fitness journal, the last time I was in the gym was around Hallowe’en.  I’ve been rowing this last month a few times a week in the mornings, but I haven’t lifted iron in around five months.

Initially, I stopped going to the gym after my routine was disrupted by travelling to Scotland.  Then I didn’t go out of laziness, and then I didn’t go because I didn’t feel like I could justify going to the gym when I was supposed to be marking assignments and prepping my lectures.  By the time December rolled around I had regained my weight, but I also proposed to my fiancee, and started the planning process for moving out of my apartment.  Along the way, I was tired from a lack of sleep and dissatisfied with what I saw in the mirror.  Yet, it was never enough to overcome my inertia.

Failing to get the job was the final push I needed to hit the gym.  Maybe I needed a physical outlet to vent some frustration.  Maybe it was a form of punishment.  I’d like to think it was something more constructive – I accepted that I failed but I also saw that I could do better next time.  It is within my power to learn from the experience and grow.  The failures seemed to stack until it hit a critical mass; a line was crossed that set off the warning bells that I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.

It was time to make the first step and correct my course.

 

I vlog occasionally for my buddy’s YouTube channel, Artpress, and posted this immediately after I got out of the gym.

So, I hit the gym and pumped some iron.  I was nervous to go back as a beginner again, and overcoming inertia was incredibly uncomfortable, but I did it.

Now the trick is to keep it up.  That’s, perhaps, the greater challenge I face.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

(Blog) Weak Will and my Monkey Brain

I did something bad last night.  I went against my better judgement and stayed up until just after 1:30am.

*Gasp!*

Ok, perhaps this isn’t the worst thing in the world.  In fact, given the demographics of the area I live in, there were plenty of other people in my neighborhood who were still awake well past my drifting off to sleep.

Why is this bad?

It’s bad for two main reasons.  First, it’s bad because it goes counter to my expressed goals of striving for 7-hours of sleep per night.  It also creeps in on my desire to not use YouTube late at night.  I’ve identified this as a problem before, and I know  that giving in to “just 10-minutes on YouTube” is a recipe for failure.

But the second and more pressing concern is that I knew better, because just 15-minutes before I sat down at the computer, I was musing on the car ride home from my shift at the bar that I should put my staff meal in the fridge and go straight to bed.  I got home, let the dog out, then sat down at the computer and thought “I haven’t done any late night surfing in a while, and I could unwind a bit since I’m not tired, so how about some YouTube?”

Big mistake.

Never mind that passively consuming online videos makes it easy to lose track of time as you spiral down the rabbit hole of content; never mind that staring at a screen is bad for your sleep and inhibits the production of chemicals that help you feel tired; I rationally knew and actively thought to myself that I know what I’m supposed to do, and I went and did the irrational thing anyway!

While I’m talking about this as if it’s an addiction, I know that this is less an issue of some sort of neuro-behavioral compulsion and more of a weakness of will.  Or, more specifically, it’s a lack of discipline on my part.  It’s thinking that I’m smarter than my own laziness.  Once again, my monkey brain won out and I ended up sabotaging my goals without really being aware of it.

You win this time, Laziness.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Sleep Check-in

February came to a close last week, which completed another full month of tracking my sleep.  This post builds on my observations made about January.

At the end of February, here’s where I stood:

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8/28 days I hit 7 hours of sleep or more.  If it were a batting average, I’d be golden.

Eight days out of twenty-eight is still pretty terrible, but it’s a 100% improvement over January’s numbers.  I never expected to make an overnight change towards better sleep, so this kind of result is above my expectations while still giving me room to clearly improve.

I track the results in my notebook as binary entries – either I sleep 7 hours according to my Fitbit or I do not.  Here’s a snapshot of what some of these nights looked like last week:

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February 22nd was a day I called in sick and went back to sleep (I was legitimately ill, not just sleepy).

As you can see, I’m often just barely missing my deadlines because I’m a restless sleeper.  Nevertheless, I know of some various steps to explore to see if I can claim a few more nights of sleep, such as a more strict bedtime routine and possibly kicking the dog out of the bedroom at night (we spoil him rotten).

Subjectively, this is the best I’ve felt in a while.  Rising before 6:30am is getting easier, I feel less groggy in the morning, I’m more motivated and active, I feel like I need less coffee to function, and most importantly my mood has lifted a bit.  The morning exercise is probably also helping with my affect.

I’m looking forward to March’s numbers.  I’ll keep you posted.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog -Disrupting Routine

Remember how I was going on last week about starting a new routine in the morning?

As luck would have it, the day after that post went live, I came down with a cold.  Normally colds don’t bother me, but it was enough for me to cancel all of my Wednesday engagements to recover, then spend the next two days at work a tired, drippy, stuffy mess.  Apparently, something is going around the Region (and our office) because many people have been off ill or discussing it online.

I had an interesting moment last week as I decided to call in sick.  Normally, I’d try to push through and save my sick days for when I was genuinely incapacitated or in need of a mental health day.  I always feel guilty conceding to being sick.  But I realized that a.) much like with sleep, it’s important that I listen to my body’s cues, because in general I feel better when I respect my body’s natural rhythms; and b.) I have a big boy job that not only pays me to stay home when I’m sick, but also expects that I respect the office and not bring sickness to it.

So, rather than pushing it, I decided to take the week and weekend off from trying to be productive.  This morning, I resumed my rowing and reading, even if I wasn’t yet up to 100%.

Slow and steady.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Morning Productivity

I had an interesting morning last Tuesday.  As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been getting up early with my fiancee.  She typically leaves for work around 7am, and I don’t need to leave for work until around 9am, which leaves me with almost 2-hours to fill with how I wish.

I could go back to sleep and work on hitting my 7-hours of sleep per day goal (as of writing, I’m still failing on this goal, but only narrowly).

Or, I could try to use this quiet time to do some things distraction-free.

*If my fiancee is reading this, I mean distraction from technology and daily pressures.  Love you!*

I’ve been steadily adopting the latter option, and last Tuesday I had an amazingly productive morning.

First, I read for around 30 minutes.  I’ve been working my way through Tim Ferriss’s new book “Tools of Titans” which is hefty 700 pages.

Then, I opened up the Coursera app on my phone and did a few lecture videos on an introductory calculus course I’m working on, including practice problems on functions.  That was around 15-20 minutes.

Then I went upstairs to row for 10 minutes.  I started rowing two weeks ago in the mornings and I’ve already noticed an improvement – I’m less winded after the workout and my hips are not nearly so tight afterwards.  I’ll probably write a post about rowing soon, but for now it’s a small habit I’m trying to instill during the work week.

After rowing, I recorded two vlogs.  I recorded a short vlog for Art Press, my podcasting partner’s side-channel that features vlogs from artists who also exercise.  Then, I recorded my daily vlog that I upload privately to my channel as my version of a diary.  The two vlogs took me 5-7 minutes to record.

Then, I finally showered and got ready for work.

Reflection

I know that starting your day on the right foot is a key to success.  It sets you up with a positive mindset that you are accomplishing your goals and using you time well.  I certainly don’t want to do things for the sake of being busy.

I suppose I’m being a little arrogant by sharing this information within my social media feeds – I’ve been tweeting my progress on rowing, and sharing my small productivity wins as they happen.  Am I just looking for approval from others?  Does sharing this really keep me motivated and accountable?  Would I enjoy the process less if I didn’t share (boast) about it?  Am I looking to inspire others?  Lead by example?  Make them jealous?  I don’t have good answers for this.

I also don’t know whether I can keep this up regularly.  This system (I’m calling it a system for the sake of the argument) is fragilely held afloat because of my fiancee’s schedule.  If that were to change, I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t be able to wake up at 6am on my own – I have about of decade of anecdotal evidence to support this.  Also, will I be able to keep this pace?  Exercise, reading, studies, and vlogging takes up a lot of time; will I be able to guarantee that I’ll have enough time and mental focus everyday to continue this process.  Again, I don’t have an answer to this.

Time will tell.  After all, as of writing, I only have one data point to draw an inference from.  It’s important to not get too far ahead of myself and focus on hitting my targets tomorrow.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

I Really Need to Sleep More

As the title says, I need more sleep.  It should surprise no one that sleep is good for you and you generally feel better getting more of it.

And yet, I’m terrible at it.  I’ve known for a while I’m terrible at managing sleep, but wearing a Fitbit over the last year really helped quantify how terrible I am.

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Here is a typical week for me back in mid-October, 2016.  As you can see, I was averaging less than 6-hours a week, and I would occasionally punctuate my sleepiness with a crash that would waste half a day by recuperating.  By the end of the academic term, I was turning into a zombie.  Things were starting to slide, I felt irritable, my weight had gone up; basically everything bad about not getting sleep was happening.  The only thing that thankfully did not happen was falling asleep behind the wheel.

A small part of me wore my fatigue like a badge of honour.  It was the natural consequence of hustling and being busy.  The problem with this is it was impressing no one, it was wearing me out, and it was pissing people off who I was failing to deliver to on my promises.

Something needed to change.

… And the Clock Strikes Twelve – New Year, New Rules

While I’m not a big new year’s resolutions guy, I saw the start of January as a good time to try and reclaim my sleeping habits.  I had wound down a bunch of my obligations, finished teaching, and was going to spend less time commuting for a long-distance relationship (the fiancee was moving back to my city), so January made sense to focus on cultivating a better sleeping habit.

Step one in any major change is to identify and isolate the variables you want to modify, and track the delta from your baseline.  After all, you can’t change what you don’t measure.

I set 7-hours as a good goal to strive towards as it was more sleep than I was used to but not an unreasonable jump that would set me up for failure.  I decided to track each day’s worth of sleep as a binary yes-no check in my notebook.  The Fitbit would auto-track my sleep, and I would manually log my sleep to ensure I was consciously paying attention to sleep.  I modified the Bullet Journal method and tracked the days I got less than 7-hours of sleep (alongside the days I read, and the days I exercised).

After one month, I look back at my progress.

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For privacy reasons, I’ve blocked out my calendar notes.

Yikes.

Needless to say, if January is my baseline, then at least I have nowhere to go but up.  I hit my target four times all month.  My reading habit was fairly strong, and my exercise is still abysmal.

Light on the Horizon

There is one thing that has changed in February so far that has given me hope: my fiancee has started a new job.

As of writing, she’s in her first week at her new job, and I have only now given notice to my apartment managers that I will be moving in with her, so I’m spending a few nights a week at her place to help support her as she starts the job.  This includes groceries, errands, and taking care of our dog.

Her new job is a few cities over, so she needs to commute about an hour each way, meaning she needs to get up before me and hit the road before I normal would wake up.  As a consequence, she needs to follow a fairly strict bed time while she adjusts to the new schedule.

At one point, I would have let her go to bed, then I would have gone to bed whenever I felt like it, and set my own alarm.  But, in the spirit of supporting her (and wanting to spend quality time with her), I’ve been going to bed at the same time as her, and getting up with her to tend to the dog’s morning needs.

The days where I’ve gotten 7+ hours of sleep have been the greatest I’ve felt in a long time.

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Wednesday would have been 7-hours if I hadn’t had restless sleep.  The Fitbit subtracts your restless period from the total duration of sleep.

Obviously, it’s too early to suggest that I’ve got my habit down, but subjectively I can report feeling better overall.  I have wanted to wake up early for some time now, and getting up with my partner has felt great.  I have time to enjoy my morning coffee while I read or listen to the news, and not feeling rushed out the door has lifted my spirits.  Ideally, I want to keep this going, so it’ll be interesting to see how the system adapts to other obligations in my life (working at the bar being the harshest pressure on my sleep schedule).

I know that rationally, sleeping is good.  It’s good for mental clarity, it’s good for decision-making, it’s good for general health as well as weightloss.  But knowing the facts has so far proven to be a challenge for me.  Perhaps focusing on my relationship and supporting my partner’s success is just the motivation I’ve needed to force me to take better care of myself.

We shall see where things go from here.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan