Sunday, April 8, 2012

Get Up or Sleep In?

Prepping to do battle with my mortal enemy... my alarm clock.
Photo by Keattikorn

This is one of those eternal debates where everyone has chosen a side and no amount of persuasion will ever convince you to change.  Right?

Then why am I finding myself on the fence?

I've always been a late riser.  Happiness is sleeping in past 9.  But I feel like I should be getting so much more done during the day, so I've been giving those hours before 9 the hairy eyeball, trying to decide if I want to reclaim them or not.

This should be an easy decision!

Let me walk you through a typical workday:

6:20 am  Alarm starts going off.  I begin slapping the snooze button.
6:40 am  I relent, groan, roll out of bed and pull on my sweats.  I stagger down the hallway to drag my son from his bed so he can get ready for school.
6:50 am  I check my email, bleary-eyed, while my son gets ready for school.  I'm mostly on autopilot, but I am alert enough to make sure he's getting himself ready and hand out reminders as necessary.  If my daughter gets up, I send her back to bed.
7:15 am  Elias leaves for the bus stop, and I stagger back to bed.
8:30 am  My daughter begins pestering me.  I roll over and she either climbs into bed and snuggles or heads back to her own room.
9:30 am  The pestering wins out and I drag my sorry self from bed, once again feeling guilty for sleeping so long and wondering whether I could possibly handle getting up earlier.  I fix breakfast for myself and Maddie, get her hooked up with her favorite show, read email and Facebook while I eat, then start my workday at 10 am.

I could be doing a lot more with those hours in between.  Or could I?  Do I actually have it in me?  Or would I just stare at the screen for two hours waiting for my brain to wake up?

I've read plenty on resetting your circadian rhythm and whatnot.  After all, I used to work a job where I had to be in seat doing productive things by 7:30 every morning.

So how valuable is that sleep time?  The main question is -- is it more valuable than the work I could be doing during that time? 


Next week I'll experiment with getting up a bit earlier.  It's spring break for the kiddo, so I won't be getting up quite so early, so maybe it will be a way to gradually ease into it.  I'll report back on my success (or lack thereof).

No comments:

Post a Comment