But the habit I'm most concerned about right now is arising early. About three weeks ago (or is it four weeks now? I'm not sure) I vowed to change my sleep patterns from a life-long late to sleep and late to arise style. For many years now I justified my late to bed tendency on the grounds that I didn't have enough peace and quiet until very late at night, and therefore I needed to stay up late in order to write. As time marched by, in the last year or two I have found myself tired out by my heavily people-oriented work during the day, and realized my most alert and creative times were when I first woke up in the morning. And so began my journey of turning myself into a very early riser. This worked quite well for the first few weeks, and I found myself more productive, including beginning this full implementation of GTD methods aimed at finally feeling like a well-organized productive person. The last five days however, have been a bust, and I am slowly creeping back to staying up and rising late. Not what I want. Not ultimate productivity for me. I'm going to buy a super loud alarm clock today and put it across the room, so I have to get up to turn it off. Maybe that will work. Somehow GTD and rising up early are connected for me. So here I am, a work in progress not perfection. Steve Pavlina write lucidly about arising early, and a method he used to get himself to be an early riser. What you do is get into bed at various times of day, pajamas and all, set the alarm clock for a short while later, pretend to fall asleep until the alarm rings, and then jump up to turn it off and resume your days. Pavlina suggests this gets you into the habit of leaping up at the alarm, its a simple behavioral intervention.
Pavlina suggests:
What’s the real solution then? The solution is to delegate the problem. Turn the whole thing over to your subconscious mind. Cut your conscious mind out of the loop.
Now how do you do this? The same way you learned any other repeatable skill. You practice until it becomes rote. Eventually your subconscious will take over and run the script on autopilot.
This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/I'm ready to try it, I thought I didn't need to go that far, but obviously I do. Pavlina also suggests that it takes 30 days to establish a new habit. He describes his own ventures into developing new habits, by promising himself that he will do the new habit he wants to develop, for thirty days, no less and more only if he wants to continue it after the 30 days. He says to look at it as an experiment, and one you have to do every day for 30 days before you decide if you want to institute some new behavior on a permanent basis. I don't know where he got his evidence for the "30 day mastery to a new you," meaning this might be one of those pieces of folk wisdom that is right on target, or it might be folk mythology. But having failed at waking up early, or seeing myself slip backwards, I'm ready to try Pavlina's methods, not only in the "going to bed in the middle of the day" behavioral intervention, with the addition of the cognitive trick, tell myself this is only for 30 days and I can change my mind at the end of 30 days, and not one day sooner.
2 comments:
Hi Lynn,
I think of Langston Hughes who was very productive but who never got up until afternoon. He wouldn't answer the phone before afternoon, and some interviewer asked him what if one of his friends called in the morning. He responded that if someone called in the morning, it couldn't possibly be a friend.
His father was an efficiency nut who left the U.S. to escape the racism here. In Mexico his dad became a successful businessman and made lots of money while leaving Hughes' mom, a poverty striken cleaning woman, behind. Hughes hated his dad for a variety of reasons, one of them being that his dad was always saying, Hurry up! Hurry up!
I had to take stock of myself behind that one, because I was always saying to students, Hurry up! Hurry up! I did the best I could to curb that inclination.
The idea that we can train ourselves to different patterns of operating is an interesting one.
Pam
I seem to be back on track, up at 5 AM this morning, and working soon thereafter. I'm still too close to it to be asleep yet, I'm determined now to follow the suggestions of Pavlina, of doing this as an experiment just for 30 days, and then see how I feel about it. I can teach and old dog new tricks, I think I can. I am always in a hurry also, but there is no reason for it. I generate my own production, and am mainly hurrying myself. In any case, I am glad to hear of Langston Hughes, I'm in good company. But for 30 days I'm giving this a try. I'll keep you posted.
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