I need more sleep. No, I'm blaming neither stress nor other people of
stealing it. As I'm rather a night owl than an early bird, I tend to do
a lot of reading and tinkering after others have gone to bed.
In the past months, this resulted in me often getting less than six
hours of sleep for several nights in a row, but I think I need about
seven on average to really feel well. In addition, I have noticed
whenever I fell sick during the past years, it was when I was deprived
of sleep. Therefore, I need to find a way to force myself to sleep
more, and for that purpose, I have started a sleep journal.
Before going to sleep and after waking up, I write down the time on
paper. I think it is important to use paper, not some electronic
gadget. I have a watch that would do that for me, but I don't use it.
With paper, the last thing before going to sleep is non-electronic,
which helps for decoupling, and doing it on my own on paper makes it a
more concious activity.
The data in the journal is not really important (I don't want to keep
scores), but the whole exercise creates some kind of accountability for
myself. This way, I hope to feel bad enough to improve when I'm getting
too little of sleep.
In addition, I'm combining the journal with a daily review and planning
for next day. These are mostly electronic based, but with the journal,
at least I'll finish on paper!
And if you noticed a change in style at the sentence with
"accountability" then congrats: you noticed me being slightly drunk! We
had a nice small evening party at a neighbour, with all the people from
our street (with little kids as well). I had one beer and two glasses
of red wine, and I was very talkative, my wife said. Apparently still
in a decent way! _phew_
