Accidents happen. The accidental things in life are sometimes the moments you should be paying the most attention to.
I can tell you without hesitation that I am a night person. I love the late-night clickity clack on the keyboard as my mind races towards the next project. I love sleeping in until 8 or 9 before heading into the office. I also love how the Universe kindly puts me in my place whenever it doesn’t agree with what I love.
This late-sleeper and my wife got a puppy four weeks ago. This puppy, for the first week at least, had no concept of time. Day, night – it made no difference to her. It whined to go outside every hour or two – all day and all night. I’m not going to pretend like this was worse than people who have babies. I’m sure it’s nothing in comparison - but this was a BIG deal to me. My schedule was completely thrown off, I was tired every minute of every day, and I hadn’t accomplished anything really worthwhile since she arrived.
By the way, the puppy is a female Shih Tzu and Terrier mix. Her name is Beta, she’s 15 weeks old, and weighs about 6 or 7 pounds. She probably won’t get over 12 pounds full-grown. She absolutely loves people and chasing anything that moves – even wind.
Four weeks without a full blog post or completing a project is like an eternity for me. I had to figure out a way to “fix” this.
Beta is at the point now where she can sleep at night for about 5 or 6 hours without having to go out. She’s so tiny that I don’t think this will ever get to be much longer – at lease by much. So, at least for now, I decided to analyze my current out-of-flux life:
I’m still up late, because that’s what I’m used to. However, after about 8pm, I’m completely worthless I’m so tired. I essentially spend the next 5-6 hours letting the dog out and wishing I was in bed. Many times, my wife gets up with the dog to let her out in the morning. However, I end up waking up, going back to sleep, waking back up for the next 3-4 hours until I would “normally” get up.
I’ve noticed, though, that when I get up to let the dog out in the morning at 4 or 5am, I have a hard time going back to sleep right away — once I’m up, I’m up.
I decided to use my body’s new schedule to change the way I do things.
I was up at 4am this morning to let the dog out. I put her back to sleep for a little while while I got ready. Took her back out at 5am and played with her a little bit, got her some food, put her back to bed and left for the office.
After a Starbucks stop, I was here by 6am with a much clearer mind than I thought I would have. After mail-check and news updates, I was writing by 6:30. I’m not sure yet how I’ll feel the rest of the day, but I know that it can’t be much worse than what’s been happening the last several weeks. I’ll at least have a few more hours of productivity than I normally would.
Should You Change Your Schedule?
Without being forced into this by some external source (ie, a dog or baby), I’m not sure how easy this would be to do – especially if you’re the type of person who loves to be up late or up early and have always been like that.
I would challenge you to look at your schedule for a day. When are you the most productive? When are you the least productive? Is there a certain time of the day you typically spend doing nothing except sitting around, watching TV? If you have goals that you want to reach in life, those goals and dreams should be enough to get you to at least evaluate your current schedule.
If it’s not working, change it. If I can get 4 extra hours per day just by waking up early and not continually going back to sleep, then that’s what I need to do. If you’re spending the late evening hours forcing your eyelids open to watch some primetime summer series or, heaven forbid, Daisy of Love – maybe it’s time you ask yourself what’s more important?
Maybe you’re one who gets up early, but doesn’t accomplish anything. Have you thought that maybe your body just wants to be productive at night? I’d say it’s worth trying. Forget the “early bird gets the worm” stuff, this is about your unique body and energy. Who knows, maybe you need the moonlight to feed your creativity. Creepy ;)
The bottom line here is that we need to stay aware of our productivity cycles. If we aren’t as productive as we’d like to be – there are likely times of the day that we COULD be productive, but are just doing other things at those times. Adjust accordingly and let’s watch our productivity sore!
