Yet Another 30 Days

Put The Fork Down: Day 10

2008-05-15T06:53:00.002-04:00

Calories Consumed: ~1650
Weight Lost: 1 lb.
Total Weight Lost: 9.5 lbs

Getting close to a 10 lb. milestone. Truly not bad for 1.5 weeks worth, but i know that this is the easy part. the hard part is keeping it up for the next 6-12 months.

Put The Fork Down: Day 9

2008-05-15T06:52:00.004-04:00

Calories Consumed: ~1500
Weight Lost: (-0.5 lbs)
Total Weight Lost: 8.5 lbs

Another busy day at my day job. The temptation to eat is strong, but the $700 contract keeps me going.

Put The Fork Down: Day 8

2008-05-13T07:05:00.002-04:00

Calories consumed: ~1200
Weight Lost: 2.5 lbs.
Total Weight Lost: 9 lbs

Yesterday due to unexpected business at work, I was unable to consume a mid afternoon snack (since I try to eat something small every 4 hours or so). That left a decision as to whether to make up the calories at dinner, or just to eat a normal portion, and be under my daily target significantly (target is ~1500).

I chose to eat normally, but I am concerned regarding the health impacts of eating so little. Anyone know the correct answer?

Put The Fork Down: Day 7

2008-05-12T06:11:00.003-04:00

Mother's Day (Day 7) resulted in mild over eating. I snacked on some bananas that I didn't realize were so full of calories (105).

Total calories consumed: ~1700 (should have skipped 2 bananas)
Weight Lost: 2 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 6.5 lbs.

1 Week In, here's how I stand against the target. I'm 5.5 lbs ahead of being out $700.

Put The Fork Down: Day 6

2008-05-12T06:04:00.003-04:00

Day 6: Calories consumed: ~ 1600
Weight Lost: 0 lbs.
Total Weight Lost: 4.5 lbs.

Nothing eventful... Today was notable because I consumed 2 meals instead of 3. I would have rather spread it out and had a snack and a smaller dinner, but the social situation demanded some discretion.

Put The Fork Down: Day 5

2008-05-10T05:57:00.003-04:00

Calories Consumed: ~1650
Weight Lost (-1.5lbs)
Total weight lost (4.5 lbs)

Picked up 1.5 lbs today. I think this indicates that the initial 5 lbs are out, and now I'm into normal fluctuation. I'm still ~3.5 pounds ahead of needing to pay out, but i'm confident that as long as I continue ~1500 calories / day, I won't have any issues.

Put The Fork Down: Day 4

2008-05-09T06:19:00.002-04:00

I'm feeling increasingly positive about this.

Today's Stats:
Calories Consumed: ~1350.
Weight Lost: 2 lbs.
Total Lost: 6 lbs.

I'm not even extremely hungry throughout the day, the secret truly is "putting the fork down". The core changes are:
- No snacking on crap in the breakroom throughout the day (cookies, pastries etc.)
- Eating about 50% of what I normally would. (1 slice of pizza instead of 2, half a sandwich)
- The hardest part is remaining focused, and realizing that the joy of eating food only lasts for a very brief time. I'll feel good about being 6 pounds lighter all day long.

Note: I recognize that the first 10 lbs are so are retained water weight, come off easy, and i can't expect to maintain the progress forever. However, it still feels good. (It also gets me closer to getting my money back)

Put The Fork Down: Day 3

2008-05-08T06:05:00.003-04:00

Work was pretty stressful yesterday, and I was severely tempted to eat things that were bad for me, but as i look back, it certainly wasn't necessary.

Calories Consumed: 1258
Weight Lost: 0 lbs.
Total Weight Lost: 4 lbs.

Current average caloric intake: 1390

Put The Fork Down: Day 2

2008-05-07T06:07:00.003-04:00

Made it through the day without incident.

Day 2 Status:
Calories Consumed: ~1550
Weight Lost: 2lbs.
Cumulative Weight Lost: 4 lbs.

Much of the lost weight has been from the previous weekend, where I ate and drank to enjoy the last days of full food enjoyment for the next year.

The knowledge that eating bad things will cost me $700 is extremely powerful. I had a bad day, and could have easily broken the plan were it not for the threat.

Put The Fork Down: Day 1

2008-05-06T05:59:00.003-04:00

Trial #3 is going to be a little longer than 30 days. It is entitled, "Put The Fork Down", and is a quest to lose weight.

It was inspired by reading the following articles on the Freakonomics Blog:

I looked at stickK, but was not satisfied that you had to put it all up front. Lets say you wanted to put up $500 / week against a target of 20 pounds, they want you to put up $10K. Thats just not reasonable.

So instead I have put up $700 ($500 personal money + $200 uncollected winnings from a bar bet) and given it to a sadistic friend of mine. If I fail, he is to waste the money in a fantastic way. If I win, I get the money back. Ways that we've come up with to truly waste the money.

Purchase a high end bottle of booze and dump it out
Hire an high priced escort, and take her out for dinner & a movie.
Purchase a single pair of cufflinks

I don't know what he'll do with it eventually if I lose, but I do know that it will be wasted, and that no value will come out of it.

Day 1 Status:
Calories Consumed: ~1350
Weight Lost: 2 lbs.

I did "cheat" and intentionally drank and ate like a slob the weekend before starting this to give me a little bit of a head start.

The secret diet plan?

I'm going to Put The Fork Down. It really isn't that hard. Especially with the index card in my pocket that reads: Is that really worth $700?

Early Riser: Days 26-30

2008-05-05T05:14:00.003-04:00

As you can see from the lack of updates, I've been slacking a little bit.

My excuse is that I was out of town, in central time, which made things difficult. Unfamiliar environment, a more difficult work schedule made sticking with it difficult.

My final stats:
Average Wake Time: 5:42 (I allowed a full sleep-in twice in the month that really blew up this average)
Average Sleep Time: 11:09
Average Snooze Time: 19 minutes (Total 595)
Average Awake Time: 17 hours, 27 minutes
Average Sleep Time: 6 hours, 14 minutes

Now that the trial is officially complete, I think I'm going to stick with it. I enjoy the morning hours, reflecting on life as I write this log.

The good:
- Splitting my awake "free" time between morning and night allows for segregation of productive time with decompression time.
- I feel alot better when I get to work.
- I have a more optimistic world view (this may be due to self reflecting on this log)

The bad:
- The 2-3 pm slump hits harder.
- It is much harder to go out with friends with the knowledge that I need to get up early.
- It is very easy to disrupt the rhythm

I'll write a full wrap up tomorrow. Follow-ups on this topic will occur at day 60 and day 90.

Early Riser: Day 25

2008-04-29T07:34:00.003-04:00

It felt good to get back in the habit. I had a solid day, slumped a bit in the mid afternoon, and finished strong. I crashed at 10:15pm, which felt early because I'm in Texas, so it was 9:15 and the hotel piano was still rockin strong, but for this short trip I'm staying on Eastern time.

I think what I plan to do after this is done is to set up alternating Saturdays as sleep debt days... in which I will wake up without an alarm to make sure I'm not hurting myself. I want to continue doing it on Sunday to ensure that Monday isn't a dead day when I go back to the office.

Reflecting on the weekend, where I slept in both days, all I can think is that I just had less weekend than I otherwise could have.

I did feel happier for the first 30 minutes of the day though.

Early Riser: Days 22-24

2008-04-28T06:03:00.004-04:00

Friday night I stayed out late having drinks with co-workers and going to a 9:30 movie. I nodded off a bit during the movie (it is the first time I've ever fallen asleep in a movie theater). I don't know if this says bad things about the movie, or just indicates that I was very tired.

I turned off the alarm for Saturday, ended up waking around 7. This caused me to stay up late on Saturday, and I slept till 9 on Sunday.

It's truly amazing how easy it is to break the habit. I'm on a business trip, and I forced myself to get up at 5 (eastern) despite being in Central time. The good news is that I have even more time in the morning to catch up on things. The bad news is that I got only 3 hours of fitful sleep, and today is going to be a trial.

The fact that I slept so late on Sunday makes me question whether or not I've accumulated some sleep debt.

I think the next thing I want to add to the trial is regular exercise. I think that with the addition of exercise, I'll be tired earlier, which will enable me to not only get the sleep I need, but also improve my physical health.

Early Riser: Day 21

2008-04-25T06:20:00.004-04:00

Short post today. Stayed out late with some co-workers and snoozed a bit in the morning. Going out again tonight with my boss that could challenge the stamina. I'm not willing to allow for for a "wake up whenever you feel like it" day until after I've made the 30 day habit.

Still 100% satisfied with the results of this trial, a little disappointed that I've still wasted 4+ hours snoozing.

Early Riser: Day 20

2008-04-24T05:55:00.003-04:00

Up without issue today. I did stay in bed for a bit, not snoozing, but also not being productive, just thinking, and trying to psych myself up and out of bed.

Did some more reading by Dr. Piotr Wozniak, one of the folks behind SuperMemo, mentioned in an article in this months WIRED magazine [subscribe]. Strange co-incidence that he popped up through two different channels within a week.

Anyhow, he wrote about sleep with respect to learning and memory (relevant as he's a producer and seller of memory optimization software.

His statement:

Myth: Alarm clock can help regulate sleep rhythm. Fact: Alarm clock can help you push your sleeping rhythm into your desired framework, but it will rarely help you accomplish a healthy sleeping rhythm. The only tried-and-true way to accomplish a healthy sleep and a healthy sleep rhythm is to go to sleep only then when you are really sleepy, and wake up naturally without external intervention

A few times in my life I've tried this while I'm on vacation. I found that I ended up staying up later and later each day, and consequently woke later and later.

If I were self employed, or possibly employed in an academic capacity, I'd consider this, but the reality in a corporate setting is that the alarm clock is necessary to get me up in time to go to work, be productive, and earn money.

Tomorrows Search: Is there a compromise?

Early Riser: Day 19

2008-04-23T05:14:00.002-04:00

Successfully got up at 5 today. A key reason for that was that my computer alarm clock (The Proclaimers) was set a little louder than usual, so I had to get up and shut it off rather than snoozing through it.

Today's sleep related reading: An article on polyphasic sleep by Dr. Piotr Wozniak. There are several interesting points:

Alarm clocks are not healthy solution to waking up in the morning
There is no recommended amount of sleep per person, it varies wildly between 6 and 8 hours per day per person.
Humans, like apes, are naturally biphasic, which explains the mid afternoon slump that you thought was caused by eating too much pasta.

Perhaps that will be the next trial: waking up with an alarm clock and not losing my job.

Inbox Zero: Day 1

2008-04-22T06:07:00.003-04:00

I'm only going to write updates on this weekly, as there isn't nearly sufficiently interesting progress to report daily, but I am going to attempt to get my Inbox down to zero items at the end of each day. Each item will need to be converted into a task, responded too, or filed away.

I started yesterday with 1100+ items. I'm currently at 918. I'm going to expect that it will take me the better part of the month to accomplish this. Getting down to ~500 is easy. I can file away certain senders in bulk, as I have already read their emails, just forgot to file them because I am lazy. Getting down to 200 is slower, I end up finding more and more things that require some kind of action that I've been putting off (thats why it's in the Inbox), so the processing speed gets slower.

The closest I've ever gotten is 50.

The daily goals are:

At the end of each day, I will have no email items remaining from that day (at the time I shut down for the day)
I will also make 100 additional items / day progress until I reach 200 items
At 200 the target will become 25
At 50 the target will become 10

This means I should require 18 days to reach the goal.

Early Riser: Day 18

2008-04-22T05:58:00.004-04:00

Getting close to 3 full weeks. I slept poorly last night and allowed myself to snooze twice before getting up. Failure.

I used to hate Mondays. Getting up early to go to work after a nice relaxing sleep filled weekend was a terrible sensation. With a more consistent sleeping pattern, I have found that my Monday is now just like any other day. A good chunk of that is being able to go to bed on Sunday night.

Yet another perk of doing this. I think I'm going to stick with it.

Early Riser: Day 17

2008-04-21T06:08:00.003-04:00

Got up at 5 without issue today. It didn't even feel unpleasant. I did get to bed early (10ish) both Saturday and Sunday.

I think weekends are easier to go to sleep earlier because there isn't pressure to cram stuff in at night. On a week night, I'm home around 7-8pm. After eating, goofing off a bit, it just seems terrible to go to sleep at 9, as if all I've done that day is go to work.

Today's crazy sleep related story: Did you know that whales and dolphins only sleep with half their brain at a time so that the other half can ensure that they come to the surface and breathe? They are called conscious breathers. You have to wonder how that evolution took place.

Early Riser: Day 16

2008-04-20T22:04:00.002-04:00

Got up on time, everything flowing smoothly, although I definitely wanted to sleep later.

I think the next thing to tackle is to start a fitness plan. What a better use of those morning hours than going to the gym?

Early Riser: Day 15

2008-04-19T20:29:00.002-04:00

Stayed up late again (midnight) , woke up at 5, and fell asleep till 6:30. Since the consensus is that a sleep cycle is about 90 minutes, I'm not bent out of shape about it, although I am concerned about breaking the habit.

It feels odd to have the tiredness shifted forward in the day... around 7pm I start thinking about how long I've been up etc.

These daily updates are getting harder and harder to write, as there isn't much new material. Writing about it does force me to stick with the habit, since I don't want to report failure.

Early Riser: Day 14

2008-04-18T06:15:00.006-04:00

The streak was broken. Not only did I stay up late again (11:15), but I snoozed when I woke up. Now that we're 2 full weeks in, I figured I'd share some stats.

Average Wakeup Time: 5:20 AM
Average Sleep Time: 10:45 PM
Average Time Awake: 17 hours 25 minutes
Average Time Asleep: 6 hours 20 minutes
Average Time Snoozing: 15 minutes

The biggest reduction here is the average snooze time. I don't even want to estimate what it used to be on the weekend, but on an average weekday, it was probably closer to 30 minutes.

I'm happy to have reclaimed at least some of that time. Now the key will be to eliminate it!

Early Riser: Day 13

2008-04-17T05:17:00.002-04:00

4 consecutive days of getting up on time, but also 4 consecutive days of going to bed relatively late. I've been hitting the hay around 11pm, and I feel that it's causing unnecessary tiredness in the morning. I'm feeling more and more tempted to go an unbounded night, perhaps this weekend.

However, I definitely don't want to break the habit of getting up at 5. So today I'm instituting a new rule:

No activities other than reading after 9:30.

This has been mentioned by others trying to follow the "stay up as long as you're awake" rule. Somehow, staying up doing email / surfing the internet is easier to forget exactly how tired you are.

Early Riser: Day 12

2008-04-16T06:11:00.004-04:00

Stayed up a little late last night (11:15) , but still got up on time. I'm thinking that I have this under control, although today I'm running a little behind on the things I wanted to accomplish in the AM (real work, blog, etc.)

When reading other folks who have tried the early riser thing, I notice that there are a wide variety of tactics:

How to make the change:

Don't Make Drastic Changes - Over at zenhabits.net, Leo recommends starting slow, and accelerating the wakeup time 15 minutes at a time as you become more and more comfortable.
Overwhelming Force - Steve doesn't explicitly state what method he used, but I have to assume based on his overwhelming force article that he just got up early every day.

Alarm Clocks:

Leo recommends putting the alarm clock on the other side of the room, so you have to get up to turn it off.
Steve recommends practicing the "habit" of getting up by pretending to sleep and wake up in the middle of the day.

Exceptions

Leo allows for sleeping in once a week or so.
Steve pushes for 7 days a week, with exceptions only in rare circumstances (out extremely late etc.)

Myself, I've gone the full force, no exceptions route. I did add an additional alarm clock on the other side of the room. It's working great.

The hardest part is just getting out of bed. I've been thinking about this and came to the following conclusion:

It is just as unpleasant to wake up to an alarm at normal time than it is to wake up early. The only difference is when you get out of bed.

Early Riser: Day 11

2008-04-15T05:21:00.004-04:00

2 consecutive days of getting up on time. I'm settling into a rhythm here and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. The first 30 minutes of the day are pretty awful, but I feel better throughout the day, especially in the office.

The biggest difference is that the extra 1.5 hours I'm adding at the start of the day are more productive than the one I'm giving up at the end of the night. So perhaps I'm only gaining 30 minutes, but I'm infinitely more happy about the results of that time.

A typical night on a workday is coming home, having some dinner, maybe watching some TV, but generally it's just decompressing from the work day. It is rare that I come out of a weeknight and think: "Wow, I got a lot done tonight; I'm really satisfied"

Now all of those things still happen, but I've been able to get up at 5 and write my daily blog entry, work on a side project, clean some email, do a little work for my real job.

Now I just need to find out how not to feel like a slug when the alarm goes off.

Early Riser: Day 10

2008-04-14T05:07:00.003-04:00

I did get out of bed on time today, but my fancy alarm clock trick failed. I left the volume on the PC turned at a normal volume for working, and slept right through it.

Still looking for ways to force myself out of bed that don't involve practicing getting up in the middle of the day, I really dig the concept of a commitment contract.

The idea is that you make a monetary commitment to accomplish a defined goal. If you fail, the money is donated to charity (or another person), or better yet, an "anti-charity", or a charity that specializes in raising money for something you don't like for extra motivation.

How much is reasonable to commit?

Early Riser: Day 9

2008-04-13T06:06:00.003-04:00

I failed again today. I woke up before the alarm @ 5, but allowed a snooze, and then turned the alarm off, with the intention of getting up after mentally psyching myself up.

Short story long: I woke up at 5:50. That mental psyche up took 40 minutes apparantly.

Stats for the first week:
Average wakeup time: 5:27 AM
Average sleep time: 10:36 AM
Average time in bed: 6 hours 51 minutes.
Total snooze time: 180 minutes (average of 18 minutes / day or 1.7% of my waking hours)

The snooze time is the worst. It doesn't provide any benefit. I'm sure my life would be noticeably better if I had spent those 3 hours cleaning the apartment, getting some work done, or just about anything.

I'm starting to believe the comments from Pavlina in his article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off

You actually need more discipline when you’re fully awake and conscious: the discipline to know that you can’t trust yourself to make intelligent, conscious decisions the moment you first wake up. You need the discipline to accept that you’re not going to make the right call at 5am. Your 5am coach is no good, so you need to fire him.

Of course, his recommendation is still a little too new-agey for me. So I'm going to do what he explicitly recommended against... I'm moving my alarm clock to the other side of the room, and replacing the obnoxious buzzer with an upbeat song: I'm Gonna Be.

Early Riser: Day 8

2008-04-12T22:06:00.003-04:00

I had my first failure today. There was a corporate event that I attended Friday night that resulted in not setting my alarm clock Saturday AM. I woke up at the late hour of 6:30, and I felt miserable.

It is impossible to appreciate the peaks of life without experiencing the valleys as well.

Positive things to take from this:

I had no issues staying out very late
I still woke up early

In fact, its 10pm, and I'm still going strong.

I don't have any sleep related content to add today, but I'll add some detail tomorrow when

I'm feeling better
I have a full weekend of waking up early under my belt.

Early Riser: Day 7

2008-04-10T06:00:00.002-04:00

In made it through yesterday completely without carry over issues from staying out late the night before. I went to bed exhausted just after 10.

I did have some challenges getting out of bed today (5:45 am), and think that I may need to step up the diligence about snoozing.

While I'm happy with the results of the trial thus far, and I promise I won't cheat for the 30 days, I feel like I would really enjoy sleeping in this weekend.

Todays sleep related link: An article in the National Geographic about a gene mutation responsible for causing some people to wake up ridiculously early (3am). I'm surprised, especially given that humans can adapt to anything (nurses working night shifts, people living in Alaska where there is not a typical day / night cycle. The concept that genetics could tie you to a schedule associated with the sun seems odd, since the individuals are still on a roughly 24 hour cycle.

Now that I'm 1 week in, I'm starting to think about the next trial to start. Perhaps Merlin's Inbox Zero?

Early Riser: Day 6

2008-04-09T06:55:00.004-04:00

Last night I went out for a few adult beverages with my co-workers. I was very interested in this for multiple reasons:

Will I be able to stay out past my bedtime after nearly a week of crashing at 10pm?
What effects (if any) will alcohol have on my ability to wake up the next morning.
If I give in to the desire to sleep in, will it ruin my trial? Will breaking the habit once break the habit permanently?

I'm happy to report that I was able to stay up, I had a great time, went to sleep @ 11:45 and I still got out of bed at a reasonable hour (5:30). This goes a long way to making me feel confident that I'll be to continue to lead a relatively normal social life if I choose to continue this habit after the 30 day trial.

Speaking to a colleague who has also been an early riser at times in his life, he said that it ended up making him choose whether he was going to go out on Friday or Saturday, as it was generally difficult to do both, since going out on Friday would result in crashing hard Saturday night.

Since I'm not a party animal anyway, I'm not concerned about that trade off. The benefits of getting the day started earlier are worth giving up the 1 weekend a year that I might truly want to stay up late 2 nights in a row.

Tune in for tomorrow's update to see how I made it through day 7. Did I pass out after work?

Early Riser: Day 5

2008-04-08T05:49:00.004-04:00

I'm starting to hit my stride with this. I woke up just before my alarm clock buzzer (it's one of those flashing ones that flashes light prior to making horrendous noises). I felt solid all day, and fell asleep relatively promptly just after 10pm.

I have allowed myself to drink coffee again, I'm having a single small cup in the office @ 8am, and a second @ 2pm. The 2pm one seems to ward off the mid afternoon crash that has occurred a few times since starting this trial. When these 30 days are upperhaps I'll do another on the effects of coffee / caffeine.

Over the course of the last 10 years, I have widely varied my caffiene intake, usually in proportion to what my workload is... a few years ago on hard projects working 70+ hours / week, I was drinking 2 buckets of iced coffee a day. In between stressful projects, I've tried full detox. In general, I feel better when drinking less, but the difference between 0, 1 or 2 cups a day isn't a big deal, and I wouldn't be surprised if my bad outlook when drinking 4+ is due to the need to work long hours.

Additional reading for today: Curse Edison / Swan / Göbel. Could artificial light be responsible for sickness? Is the additional 13% of waking time worth those potential health tradeoffs? I tend to think yes, given that our life expectancy has nearly doubled since the invention of the light bulb. At the very least, if you go read that article, you'll learn that Edison wasn't the only person involved in light bulb technology in the 19th centurey.

Early Riser: Day 4

2008-04-08T05:04:00.003-04:00

I seriously considered breaking the agreement on day 4. I managed to wake up @ 2am, and was about to step in the shower when I realized that I hadn't actually heard my alarm go off. After that I slept fitfully, and considered extending the wake up time to account for it.

I did snooze a little bit @ 5, but got up on time. As usual, I felt great during the first half of the day. I felt sluggish mid afternoon, but picked up a second wind around 5-6pm.

I'm noticing that using this method, it is significantly easier to go to bed. I usually find myself getting tired around 9, and I'm ready to drop at 10. This is a great change for me, as I historically have had difficulties falling asleep.

Right now, my biggest concern is that I'm simply shifting productive hours, and I'm robbing my day job of some productivity in the afternoon. Unless I'm able to make myself independently wealthy with those extra 1.5 hours in the morning, I don't want to impact my career.

Early Riser: Day 3

2008-04-06T19:57:00.003-04:00

I almost failed today.

The girlfriend accidentally hit snooze instead of turning the alarm off, and I managed to will myself out of bed on the 2nd alarm.

The day was pretty un-eventful. I was miserable for the first 20 minutes or so, but otherwise I've been going strong throughout the day. I'm even looking forward to getting up tomorrow.

The only additional piece of advice I can throw peoples way is not to lay there and rest for a bit. Force yourself to get up. Once you're up, everything is fine. It's lying there in a nice warm bed that is problematic.

Overall, I'm very happy with the results of this trial. I'm seriously considering adding another. Does anyone have suggestions?

I'm thinking about joining the Toastmasters, but that isn't exactly a daily activity. Perhaps I'd need to extend it to a 2 month trial?

Early Riser: Day 2

2008-04-06T05:13:00.002-04:00

I went to sleep @ 10:15 on day 2. It being a Saturday, I was very unhappy about waking up so early. One of my favorite things about weekends is that I get the joy of waking up without an alarm clock.

After the 15 minutes of morning brain fog cleared, once again I was pretty psyched to have those additional 2-3 hours in the morning. I got a little programming on a side project done, cleaned some emails.

However, I did go to bed about 2 hours earlier than normal both nights. I'm not convinced that I have actually gained significant time. I'm logging the wake and bed times, but I don't have the baseline data to compare it to.

I didn't have any problems with energy levels throughout the day. I did break the rules by watching a movie before bed (Lucky You), which may have kept me up later than intended. Tonight I'm going to try to only do non-stimulating things after 8pm, like read some of the magazines I've that have been stacking up.

I am now a believer in 30 day trials versus trying to make it a permanent change. Waking up at 5am on a weekend is truly unpleasant. I haven't gone so far as to practice waking up with an alarm, mostly because I feel that its a little silly, but I think I'll try it if I fail at getting up one of these days.

One thing that concerns me about this trial is the concept of Sleep Debt. Typically, I would probably get a little less sleep during the week, but I would make up for it on a weekend (sleeping in till 8am or so). If I continue this, I'm afraid that I will perpetually accumulate sleep debt, although it appears that there is debate on whether or not this is a real phenomenon.

Early Riser: Day 1

2008-04-04T18:50:00.003-04:00

It's 7pm after day 1 of 30 in my trial to become an early riser. I slumped a bit in the afternoon, but I felt great for the first half of the day.

I really appreciated the additional 1.5 hours of time in the morning. It remains to be seen how I'll fare at night, but at the very least I avoided my standard habit of snoozing for 30 minutes before dragging myself out of bed.

One concern: the national sleep foundation recommends getting 7-9 hours of sleep per night. If I consistently wake up at 5, am I really going to be going to be at 10pm? There's no chance I'm going to bed at 8.

I can't find references to support it, but I have the impression that some highly effective people have a tendency to sleep very little, possibly averaging 4 hours / night. Are they highly effective because of the extra hours? Or do they need little sleep because they were already genetically blessed? Can anyone find references to support?

Yet Another 30 Days

2008-04-04T05:33:00.000-04:00

Last night I was waiting for my girlfriend at a local Starbucks. She was running late, so I started reading Steve Pavlina's Blog on my crackberry to keep myself entertained. A colleague at work loves the guy, and the few things I had read in the past seemed interesting enough to pass a few minutes drinking a coffee.

I settled on reading How To Become An Early Riser as the concept of early rising and getting stuff done appeals to me. Next was Polyphasic Sleep which I would love to try if I didn't have a day job. The final post I read was 30 Days to Success.

Combining this, I decided to execute a 30 day trial of becoming an early riser. I set my alarm for 5, and promised that I'd get up and do something productive. Maybe work on a side project, maybe file some email for work, maybe just read the news.

In the shower @ 5:10, I decided that I might as well start another trial, which is starting my own blog, something that has been on the tickler list of "Things To Do Someday" for some time. Proving that original ideas are few and far between, http://30daytrial.blogspot.com and http://thirtydaytrial.blogspot.com were already taken.

Looks like both of them have failed at keeping it up. (4 and 1 posts respectively).

So I present to you: Yet Another 30 Days. I plan to chronicle the results of any trials I undertake. Hopefully it's interesting. Maybe I'll make some advertising dollars. Most likely I'll just get tired, grumpy and have a 4 post blog littering the internet for the rest of time.

Time will tell.