It's 3am in the states, and I'm at the computer. I slept for five hours, from 9 until 2. I was woken up by timer that was accidentally set to turn a TV on.
After lying in bed relaxing for an hour or so, I got up. Started working.
This happens quite a bit, and it used to bug me a lot. I finally made my peace with it, not because of any Zen moment (Sorry DrPhish), but because there was nothing else to do. It is what it is.
So I stopped complaining, I stopped worrying about it, I stopped trying to figure out if I was getting the right sleep or not. Instead I sleep when I'm tired. If I wake up and can't go back to sleep? I work. Eventually my body will catch up with whatever it wants to do. I work for myself. If I want to sleep, I sleep. This is one of the benefits of being self-employed.
On the plus side, you can get a lot of stuff done in the middle of the night. I do my best creative work when I'm up in these dark-of-the-night hours. It's quiet, it's peaceful, and I have time to think about and consider things instead of feeling like I'm on a treadmill.
I really enjoyed this article. It's interesting that I arrived at the same place without realizing what I was doing. I'm going to save it to share with my friends next time I hear them complaining. :)
> I work. Eventually my body will catch up with whatever it wants to do. I work for myself. If I want to sleep, I sleep. This is one of the benefits of being self-employed.
Yea, this is huge. I have in office days and in home days. I dread getting bad sleep before an in office day. Not because it's terrible, but because I don't have the reserve to last a 9.5h day in a boxed in stuffy environment. At least my home doesn't feel as draining as in the office, and I can do 4 hours of work at home and take a nap if I had bad sleep before.
The sad thing is, because our work culture focuses on hours over work, if I have bad sleep before an in office day I'm vastly less productive, because 3-5 hours into the day, I lose steam. Yet, I don't do anything to fix it. I just sit there, being unproductive, with drifty tired thoughts.
"He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)
"Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)
"And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale
The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night
After lying in bed relaxing for an hour or so, I got up. Started working.
This happens quite a bit, and it used to bug me a lot. I finally made my peace with it, not because of any Zen moment (Sorry DrPhish), but because there was nothing else to do. It is what it is.
So I stopped complaining, I stopped worrying about it, I stopped trying to figure out if I was getting the right sleep or not. Instead I sleep when I'm tired. If I wake up and can't go back to sleep? I work. Eventually my body will catch up with whatever it wants to do. I work for myself. If I want to sleep, I sleep. This is one of the benefits of being self-employed.
On the plus side, you can get a lot of stuff done in the middle of the night. I do my best creative work when I'm up in these dark-of-the-night hours. It's quiet, it's peaceful, and I have time to think about and consider things instead of feeling like I'm on a treadmill.
I really enjoyed this article. It's interesting that I arrived at the same place without realizing what I was doing. I'm going to save it to share with my friends next time I hear them complaining. :)