Admit it – we all want more hours in the day: twenty-four just isn’t enough. And the truth is, we don’t even have twenty-four! We actually have somewhere near twelve to fourteen (assuming you get a good night’s sleep). I was fed up of this. I needed more time. So I crafted a solution.
Since three weeks now, I have implemented this pattern of life (sorry if that sounded terribly cliché), and to most, it would sound like I’m a complete maniac. But honestly, it’s been amazing. Here’s what I did:
I woke up everyday at seven, and went to bed routinely past one
What happened was (and still continues to happen), is I became much more productive. I had more hours, after all. And every night, I still got at least five hours of sleep. As long as I didn’t let the five-hour chain continue for too long, I was fine; a good seven hour-er did the trick.
But it wasn’t easy, oh no. It was painful (to begin with) to force myself not to hit dismiss and go back to sleep, to toss off the duvet, to drag myself out of bed. I didn’t like it one bit. But I got used to it. It’s still not very easy though; I’m usually very drowsy for about fifteen minutes after I wake up. But I make good use of those fifteen minutes nonetheless. This is what my morning routine resembled:
- Drag myself out of bed, and drink some water. This helps to really wake up the system; your body still may feel tired, but your mind’s now awake.
- Check my phone (which is placed on the other side of the room — and yes, I do have to walk to turn off the alarm) for the notifications I’ve missed while asleep. I think the blue light emanating from the phone screen helped to wake me up (this isn’t essential though, it’s just what worked for me. Everyone has their own style).
- Pack a bag with my swimming essentials and walk to the local swimming pool for a nice forty-five minuet swim.
- Come back, eat breakfast, and get down to work.
- This was my productive time. The time when I did what was absolutely essential — write, study, send a few emails, respond to important messages, etc. If I was working on my laptop, I made sure to disable Flux.
By ten o’clock, I’m already done with two hours of productive work, had my breakfast, and exercised.
As for the nights, I just stayed up late, working into the wee hours of the morning.
I’d love to know if this works for you too! Tell me in the comments below 🙂
Originally published at medium.com