It's 5.30am on a SATURDAY morning and I'm wide awake. And it feels great! In fact, I conciously told myself, no more work- blog now and have a bit of fun!
I'm into the second week of this experiment that i think is going to turn permanent.
The experiment:
Sleep between 9-10pm each night.
Plan to get at least 5hours of sleep.
Wake up between 3-4am.
Clear emails and do some work.
Or if there are outstanding work that needs to be done, skip the emails and sort out the work.
Shower between 6-6.30am, before waking the boys up at 7am and getting them sorted for school!
My bosses actually asked me if things were ok, as they realised I was sending out emails at 4-5am in the morning. So sweet of them to be concerned, don't you think? And my reply was- things are GGGGRRREEEEAT!
You see...I try and leave the office early. Usually i try and dash out by 5am so that I can spend some time with my boys. They go to bed about 8.30pm. If I leave at 5. I get back about 6ish, and get a good 3 plus hours with them. I can't imagine spending any less time with them on a daily basis!
Given that work hours are largely filled with meetings, most of my peers and I end up doing a lot of work and clearing of emails outside of official working hours. It's easy to keep up with work, when you have no commitments and can work till 8-9pm in the office every other day. But for me...i'm exhausted by the time I put the boys to bed at 8.30pm.
With other stuff I have to settle at home, I end up struggling to finish my work and end up logging off between 12am-1am. I then take an 1hour of wind down, i.e. read a book or watch tv before I sleep. If I don't wind down, I will end up just staring at the ceiling all night long, my mind going through every line of email or work I had done, or intend to do. So I sleep around 2am, and then depending on my luck, the twins will take turns waking up between 4.30am-6.30 am for their early morning bottle of milk.
Yes, that means I haven't had a good stretch of sleep in close to 2 years!
The perils of Mommy-dom!
This new schedule is working great. I go to bed right after I put the boys to sleep, which is when i'm sleepiest. I actually work in a good 5-6hours of sleep, which is all I need and I actually clear work after a good nights sleep, rather than at the end of a long and tiring day. This means I'm actually doing work in the morning twice as fast than late at night.
Of course this means I tire easily at night. Last Friday, I was out karaoke-ing with the colleagues. I was half-asleep by 9.30pm. Not much fun after that. But it's kinda ok, cos you know, I have no social life anymore. Last Friday night was a total anomaly!
So since I spend most it not all my nights at home, getting to bed around 9pm is kinda easy! =) Its working so well, I'm even waking up early on my Saturday so that I can do stuff and not throw the schedule out of whack!
Mommies who work and are under a lot of pressure to put in the hours- you should SOOOO try this!