Trickling Sand

Over the years, my sleeping habits have changed as my daily routine changed. Pre-covid, when I was still commuting more than one hour each way to the office (50 km drive from Mississauga to Victoria Park and Eglinton in North York), I would wake up around 6:00 am to 6:30 am, so that I can get out the door before 7:00 am to spend less than an hour on the road. In those days, I would often fall asleep on the kids’ bed while saying their night prayers with them. Sleep deprivation was a reality of life.

Then, covid happened. At the beginning of the lockdowns, I believe I had gotten the most sleep I ever had as an adult. Nobody needed to go anywhere and I probably got 8 hours of sleep every night for a few months. Since then, life has gone back to normal, but with one significant change. That is, I’m still mostly working from home. This definitely has resulted in a greater amount of sleep. On any given day, even if I went to bed at midnight, I would be able to clock in 7 hours of sleep, which is plenty for me.

Displeased

However, recently, I have grown displeased with my daily routine. It goes something like this:

• 7:00 am – wake up, washroom routine, get dressed
• 7:20 am – summarize a couple chapters of the Bible for my X Bible Summary account
• 7:30 am – wake the kids up and get them ready
• 8:30 am – start day job
• 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm – end day job
• 6:30 pm – unproductive time or drive people to places (thank God for my mom who does the cooking)
• 7:00 pm – dinner and clean up
• 8:00 pm – unproductive time, pick up people from places, get kids showered, etc.
• 9:30 pm – get the kids to bed
• 10:15 pm – shower myself (to be honest, I often skip a day of showering when I work from home and don’t go out, especially during our dry winters…am I dirty/weird? Too much information? 😂)
• 10:45 pm – doom scroll on phone, wind down
• 11:30 pm to midnight – sleep

Productive Time

I don’t think any one day goes like the above, but it roughly illustrates how the average day goes. As you can see, there is not even time to make my Netflix subscription worth the money (although the kids take on that responsibility). The reason why I have grown displeased is due to the lack of “me time”, and I don’t mean time to binge on a TV series. What I desire is a block of uninterrupted time where I can do some deep, productive work (outside of work).

It’s summer holidays for the kids now and they have the extreme luxury of having a full 2 months off, which I can only dream of for myself. Sure, they have camps in some weeks here and there, but the summer months are a time of zero responsibility and total freedom! Athan actually has only 1 week of basketball camp for the entire summer. Otherwise, he’s free everyday. I keep telling him and also the other older kids that while consumption (e.g. watching TV, reading, playing) is good, they have to be productive as well. I can’t say I’ve been too successful convincing him! Adele did find her first paying job, outside of her past paper route, being a camp counselor this summer. While making some money is good, the main point of what I’m trying to have them learn is the preciousness of time. I forced them to subscribe to this blog so hopefully they will read this. LOL!

Everyone Has 168 Hours

Many years ago, I read Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours. Vanderkam’s basic assertion was that we have more time that we believe; we are just very good at wasting it. Our lives mostly run in 7-day cycles and each week we have 168 hours. After working 40 hours, sleeping for 56 hours, and eating 21 hours, we will still have 51 hours of free time left. Even if we needed to commute 3 hours a day to and from work, we will still be left with 36 hours of time. Yet, the modern person feels like there is very little time. It all comes down to priorities and conscientiousness. Many times, we choose to do things that are urgent but not important (e.g. going on Instagram to see what our friends have posted today before it disappears from our feeds) over things that are important but not urgent (e.g. learning a new skill to better ourselves). It kind of reminds me of St. Paul, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).

So, starting today, I will set my alarm clock to 6:00 am on weekdays (maybe an hour or two later on weekends) so that I can get a good hour of productive time before the days starts for everyone else. What will I do in that 1 hour? Here are some thoughts:

• Pray – If my day is busy, the first thing I sacrifice is prayer. It is horrible and that’s one of the top things I say during confession. If I start my day early, there is no excuse not to pray. I like walking around the block to get some steps in and I enjoy praying while doing so. Again, as St. Paul says, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), even when walking around the block!
• Run – Ever since covid, I have stopped running regularly since I haven’t participated in any races since. I do want to restart regular running to work on my VO2 max (more on that in another post).
• Write – write for this blog! I have no great ambition at this point in time (i.e. no inclination to start any other side hustle) and I do enjoy writing. So, I think I’ll make use of this free time to be productive this way.
• Work out – I will probably dedicate another post or two to exercising. I’m currently contemplating on starting weight training to counter the awful aging effects of a middle-aged man (this is so sad for me to write 😭😭😭)

Of course, I won’t be able to fit all of these activities into 1 hour. I’ll need to schedule things to happen on certain days. Don’t have a solid plan yet, but let’s just start waking up early, shall we?

Roadblocks

It’s easy to say I’ll wake up early, but the toughest thing I believe is actually going to bed earlier. Sure, I can wake up early and that’s not the hard part. The hard part is to make it sustainable. I do need at least 7 hours to feel relatively functional, and that means going to bed at 11:00 pm. Preferably, I’d like to get 7.5 hours of sleep, and a 10:30 pm bedtime seems challenging to say the least! I don’t think 10:30 pm has been my bedtime since I was in elementary school! That will take quite a bit of effort since Renee is a bit more of a night owl than I am. Maybe I need to get her to wake up earlier too! LOL!

In any case, this won’t be the last post I’ll be writing about getting up early. I’ll let you know how this goes later on! For now, good night! 😴😴😴