Hey guys, Nate here. I'm proud to announce that I'm now the Program Director of Scrawny To Brawny. From now on all of my blogs and articles will be posted on the brand-new Scrawny To Brawny Blog. So if you enjoyed what you read here, please go check it out. (It's awesome, if I say so myself.) I'm keeping the NGE website alive for resource reasons, but will no longer be actively updating it. The best way to get in touch with me is through leaving a comment on the Scrawny To Brawny blog or by posting on the S2B Facebook page. See you guys over at the new blog!
Sleep Better at Night
How to Make Virtually No Changes and Sleep Sounder
I am a light sleeper. I wake up to the sound of my cell phone vibrating, to the sound of a car door closing, to the sound of my downstairs neighbor smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone beneath my window. While this is annoying, especially because I live in an old building with paper-thin walls, it's never really been a problem for me because I can generally fall asleep quickly.
Lately, however, I've been having a really hard time falling asleep, and I wasn't sure why until last night, when I was staring at my ceiling, listening to the wind blowing my bedroom door against the door frame softly: I cannot sleep when I'm stressed.
Now, let's all take a moment to appreciate the Duh! factor of that statement. You done? Okay, now pay attention.
I know that stress is a major contributor to insomnia, and that there are probably hundreds of articles and blogs written about it, but that's not what I'm worried about. What worries me is that I went sleepless for almost two weeks before I even realized that I was even stressed in the first place.
I have a theory, and among my friends it's been holding pretty true: you can reduce your stress enormously by simply naming the factors in your life that are stressing you out.
I'm relatively convinced that stress comes not from having too many deadlines or from the hectic nature of our lives, but rather from the feeling of dread that springs from feeling that things in our lives are out of control and that we have no idea what's going on. It's that feeling of losing control that is freaking us out, not the workload, personal problems, or lack of time.
For example, right now I'm stressed out because I'm working a pretty steady forty to forty-five hours a week at a day job, working on four freelance projects, interviewing with a few companies for a higher-paying, more fulfilling day job, and trying to start a band, all while attempting to keep my personal life (i.e. getting to the gym, cooking meals, cleaning my apartment, grocery shopping, etc.) in some kind of flow. That's a lot of balls to keep in the air, and I've never been great at multi-tasking. So I've felt really stressed; I worry that I don't have enough free time to keep up with my freelance projects, but I'm scared that I can't afford to lose my day job until I have more freelance work; I'm terrified that I'm going to to end up half-assing my new musical endeavors because I'm "too busy" to put effort into it; I haven't been grocery shopping in two and a half weeks, and I missed a couple workouts, so I've been feeling like I'm gaining weight and falling back to my old, bad nutritional habits.
My last couple weeks have been permeated with that gut-wrenching feeling of being late for work, and I barely noticed it because I was making myself so frantic. I lost sleep, which left me feeling groggy and actually detracted from my productivity, resulting in more panic and, therefore, less sleep.
So how do we break the cycle?
For starters, I had to sit down and list everything that I had going on. If you look above, it looks like a lot, but when I list it, it gets pretty simple:
- Full-Time Day Job (40-45hrs weekly)
- Freelance Work (10-20hrs weekly)
- Band Practice (2-4hrs weekly)
- Job-Hunting (<1hr weekly)
- Cooking, Cleaning, Working Out, etc. (7-8hrs weekly)
So, I'm looking at needing about 78 hours a week, at most, to accomplish everything I feel I need to accomplish. If I'm sleeping 8 hours a night, that means that in the average week I have 112 hours of productive time (168 hours a week - 56 hours of sleep a week = 112 waking hours). That means that I have 34 hours a week to burn before I even start wasting the time I need to keep up with my life. Add in a couple dinners with friends and a movie, and I've still got an entire day to waste, all while getting a full night's sleep.
Knowing that you've got the time won't make you any better at time management, and it certainly won't take care of your responsibilities for you, but the fact of the matter is, there's plenty of time in the week. And just realizing that you're not spread as thin as you may have thought could be just the comforting thought to help you drift off to sleep easily.
Have you had similar experiences? How do you keep yourself sane with a heavy load of responsibility? Let me know in the comments!
Nate's been busy with preparing the launch of Built for Show, so he asked me to post a blog over the weekend.
Comments for This Entry
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Great. Freaking. Post.
:)
-Nate
PS - I get the hint! -
Jason,
What instrument do you play? I'm a guitarist myself (just graduated with a BM in guitar performance).
I really like this post. Another thing that helps me get to sleep at night is to just write down my "to do" list for the next day. As soon as it's on paper and I know I wont forget anything, it's gone from my brain. I also like to put fun(ish) things on my to do list (like training or reading for enjoyment) just so I get more things to cross off...
-CD
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Chris-
I play guitar and sing a little. I checked out your Myspace, though, and I don't know if I can claim I play guitar anymore. I don't do anything like that.
And, I agree. Lists are a great thing. I spent years thinking I wasn't a list guy, but after getting overwhelmed with trying to keep too many things in my mind at once, I've taken quite a shine to checklists and white boards.
-Jason -
I try to stay as present in the moment as I can. I find that if I can focus on the task to be performed in the moment that my anxiety about completing the task disappears and my performance improves (i.e. becomes better and faster). This, I have found, allows me to accomplish more in less time which relieves my anxiety as I realize that I've gone from feeling crunched for time to having lots of it.
Even people who multi-task do one thing at a time. The only difference is that the space between tasks is shorter, often much. For greater time efficiency, look to pair your tasks like the pairing of push-pull exercises (or, pepper your periods of relaxation with work). Often times, you need only focus on something long enough to initiate it before you can switch your attention. For example, and with respect to cooking, stuff can be thrown in a pot/pan and left to simmer, while you do something else (as an aside, slow cooked food is always better tasting).
4 Precepts from Miyamoto Musashi (The Book of 5 Spheres) and Yagyu Munenori (The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War):
1. Be inwardly calm, even amidst the most violent chaos;
2. pursue everything with a deadly (life and death) earnest;
3. fixity is the way to death, fluidity is the way to life;
4. do everything with a "normal" mind - do not try, do not fail to try. Normal mind is achieved when your behaviour is so practiced that it becomes automatic.
And finally, from my favourite movie and in connection with my earlier point, I leave you with this:
Katsumoto to Algren: "In the spring, the snows will melt and the passes will clear. Until then, you are here." -
It gets a little trickier to find all that time when you've got a family at home, but I know where you're coming from.
My kids and my wife are really good at accidentally interrupting my work. That's part of why I always leave my house to try and accomplish things; I just have far too many distractions at home.
As far as the whole stress issue goes, you've got some pretty valid points. I have a tendency to let a task slip just below my radar and it starts to bother me. I get cranky and paranoid and I can't figure out why until I take the time, like you said, to sit down and list my responsibilities, and as soon as I write down that job I'd forgotten, I have one of those, "Oh, you FUCKER!" moments, and I start to breathe again.
Jeff -
One more thing.
As counter-intuitive and illogical as it sounds, when working on something and feeling panicky and pressed for time, force yourself to slow down.
I have found that slow at the appropriate time leads to faster - which works well for me as I'm slow by nature.
piece of peace.
COMMENT RULES: Critical posts are fine, but if you're rude I'll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your personal name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. But most of all, have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Tim Ferriss for the inspiration.)
Nate Green 5:35pm Jun 1, 2008