Waking up early is a gift.
A chance to start to do the long work that will define you before you have to react to the world around you.
Email can wait – same thing with text messages and phone calls. Social media can take a back seat.
That exercise, meditation, or long form creative endeavor will make everything that much clearer.
Reaching out doesn’t mean people will accept the hand.
Do it righteously, and the right opportunities will appear.
I wrote my wrap up paper last night. In turn, I made my todo list today.
I am very happy about that fact.
I feel like a todo list can keep me honest. I jus thave to get used to doing one, and living with one, every day.
The problem for me in terms of tasks tend to be I forget. As much as I say I can remember, I just plain forget. I feel like I am very smart, and with no shame, I can say people tell me that all the time, but I just realized there is no way to even begin to hold all those thoughts in your mind.
I feel like your mind is a road. Each thought is a car. When you empty the road, and allow cars back on it,all the cars drive very smoothly. So if there are three cars on the road, everything has enough space to sort of move along.
When you try to keep everything up there, then everything gets constricted. Everything gets tight. Its harder to focus, and you add pressure to yourself. Inevitably things start to slip, and you start having to say your sorry, then you get calloused to the sorry, and then people get calloused to your sorry, and things start to slip.
The highway gets full, and every single car gets angry, they get infused with bad thoughts, and your depression, fear, and stress can take hold and get the best of them.
Last night when I wrote down what I did, my todos for the next day sort of just came tumbling out. It was easy to figure out what my next moves were. I woke up this morning, then placed them in my any.do app.
Now I have a lis tof things, and a system that I can refine. I felt more powerful.
I keep the pad by the bed now. I hope through this, I can make it a part of my night, like writing my three things down. Maybe it’s time to start breaking down my evening – take thirty minutes and just go into the silence to ponder my day.
It felt good. Maybe I can get that in the morning’s, if I can only just get up on time.
I am slipping on the silence at night. I started listening to podcasts again. I am making a note of it now, and hopefully I can go back to silence.
It is a very slippery slope, and it is something I don’t want to go back down into.
I am thinking about waking up early again, and it is something I want. Birds chirping in the morning as I can get some writing done. I feel like I can start my blog writing before work, knock down some rss reading, and just start in at the job with a full mind ready to start blasting at the problems I have here.
I just have to figure out a way to start making that happen.
I hate coming to my dayjob I think. There has to be something here that I want to do in the mornings. Something that makes me want to come in the mornings and get things done.
It is something I have to really thing about. This is becoming a recurring theme, and I feel like my life gets a lot better if I can get this sorted.
My foot feels better.
I think I am about to donate the rest of my clothes. Start over.
Lets see.
3 Things Done
Todo List done
Night List done
Water done
Teeth Done
I slept for 11 hours today and I feel good for it.
I know you shouldn’t really sleep for so long, but I feel like every once in a while, you gotta just put everything by the wayside and take yourself a nice long rest.
The key is not to mix it up with depression sleep, where you can end up in bed for 18 hours or more, filled with numbness. A mental place where you are so lifeless, you lack fight, where a bunny rabbit could rob you.
But good long restful sleep.
The science on it is getting more interesting, as it has been said that to work at optimum levels you should be getting 8 to 10 hours a night.
That is a large change from what we usually do, which is get along on 4/5 hours and call it productivity.
When I ask people about sleep, most people say they have to stay up passed midnight, but if you really probe them, there is nothing important that happens after 10 PM. They mostly watch TV and text or do things that aren’t too good for you anyway, like drink and eat bad food.
I don’t want to come off preachy here, because I am no saint.It’s still difficult for me, and for me to go to sleep before 11 is a challenge, there is something mixed in with modern technology that makes us feel like we have to get one more show in, have one more drink, hear one more song, even as most of these things can be consumed for no penalty at a later date.
But, lately I have been fighting the war a little better on this front.I have been trying to force myself to get at least 8 hours of sleep a night, and I have felt better. I have adjusted my work schedule, and I have made some other changes to add more sleep to my life.
My reward has been better mental flexibility. And for cutting out some of the noise in my life, like extra YouTube videos and podcasts that, looking back on it, were just used to pass time, I have a lot more focus.
Writing this post that started from nothing really just happened in almost 20 minutes because my mind has been much sharper lately. I remember I tried to start writing again several months ago and it was a struggle to even get 300 words on the paper, but after doing it for almost a month, three hundred words, without any prep work, has been relatively a breeze. I feel flow happening in my work, and I love it.
I hope I can keep this going, because this flow thing is something that i really enjoy. Being able to knock out long coherent articles of writing is also something I have come to really enjoy.
Hopefully this can translate into other areas of life, I can improve my habits, and become a real beast in these streets.
I came up with a few things yesterday by sitting in an open mic and just observing.
It is odd that sometimes as a black guy, you feel you have to mention you aren’t playing the race card.
Women taking pictures with cell phones always look odd, like you can tell that is their 8 shot in a 15 to 20 shot photo shoot.
IMing is the Disco of communication practices.
I really like the last one, I feel like it could become a signature bit. My elusive third joke. Who knows.
Had an odd dream about getting my coworkers arrested and then having to foot the bill for it. I wonder if that is my subconscious telling me something. I feel very intrigued. Ill ponder about it today. Not one that really takes stock in dreams, but this one was just to interesting to pass up.
16/8 Not done fully due to drinks
3 things written
shower done
Water knocked out
Teeth hygiene done
No to-do list
no end of night reminder
shower
From the desk of Adam Thomas 