Monday Morning Motivator! 22, I’ll sleep when I’m dead

Show me the Benjamins

I’ve written here before about early rising, and while those words remain true in spirit if not 100% compliance (I am after all a yogi, so a modicum of flexibility is de rigueur), there is a dark side to the early rising regimen which can afflict those of us who are now waking up when we used to go to sleep. This is made clear when we look at that most famous dictum of Benjamin Franklin, arguably the first American productivity guru, and certainly the most influential over the long run:

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Okay, so maybe an apple a day keeps the doctor away (thank god!) is Ben’s most famous one liner. Somebody please take a poll! And still yet, there is a persistent dark side to the early riser thing that just quite simply makes that apple story pale in comparison, unless we are getting into the snake and the garden and those itchy itchy fig leaves…and that of course is a story for another day, because today’s post is titled:

I’ll sleep when I’m dead

So yes, the dark side of early rising is late bedding. And the lack of sleep that is built into the equation when we combine the two. And the resultant lack of health, wealth, and wisdom that goes along with a prolonged lack of sleep. Not to mention lack of motivation, good humor, creative vision, joi de vivre, lust for life,  and any number of other foreign phrases, iggy pop album titles, and just plain juicy stuff!

And while I would never go so far as to proclaim that getting to bed early will bring that passel of good bedfellows into your everyday life, I’m fairly sure that if your equation of rising time minus bed time, recalibrated in whatever meaningful way necessary to determine your daily rest in hours and fractions thereof…shit, if you aren’t getting enough rest your goose is cooked and you aren’t any good to anyone including yourself. Capiche?

Extreme example

At its worst, extreme lack of sleep can lead to things like going to work and forgetting that your 7 month old baby is sleeping in the car seat behind you. And while most of us will thankfully never be involved in such a tragedy, sleep deprived or not, the resultant little daily losses of life can ultimately add up to second tier tragedies like slowly disconnecting from life, passion, family and friend connections, and so forth ad infinitum.

It’s an attachment issue

As a former late riser, and late-stay-upper, I can say that ultimately this whole thing is about attachment and resistance to change. When I’m in bed, I’m very happy to be in bed. I could stay there forever. And once I’m awake, I’m happy as hell to stay awake, and find anything necessary to help me in that task. People, media, and substances, the more intriguing and pulse quickening the better. 

It’s this letting go and changing courses thing that was the most challenging thing to getting out of bed 3 hours or more before I would be naturally inclined to, and it’s the same thing for getting into bed, which of course is the flexible part of the necessary amount of sleep equation, once you’ve committed to early rising.

And all of this is really no different I think than the prevalent predilection toward filling life to the brim, packing as much into every day as possible, filling each nano-second with some sort of attention attraction distraction. Between books, movies, television, email, twitter, facebook, sports, exercise, hobbies, parties, clubs, nightlife…whew! So much to do! So little time! I’ll sleep when I’m dead!

Of course we are getting close to addiction territory here, although I prefer to think of addiction as an attachment issue, like attachment on steroids, or attachment acted out as a bold and tragically beautiful drama queen. And rest is something we can do whether we are awake or asleep. And it is, like greens are to the diet, the number one most important missing ingredient in the palette of our daily activity. 

And just as mineral-rich greens are healing to the nervous system, so too is rest, space, quiet, emptiness. And all of this activity is nothing if not a nervous condition, non-stop mentality played out as non-stop action faction consumption assumption. What the hell…

I could talk talk talk talk talk myself to death

And I believe I would only waste my breath. So let’s get on with the action! The action of inaction.

Divide and conquer

Given my current life circumstances (read: work and teaching schedule), I think (see what I mean?) the only way to get this situation under control for myself is to make sure that every day of the week (that would be all 7 of them) I make sure that I do something non-mental, non-strenuous, non-serious. Something like walking in the park, or hanging out with a friend, playing with the boy, cuddling with the woman. Something that doesn’t belong to the go go go do do do. That could be tough, so I’ll be keeping a log and reporting back. Perhaps I’ll even send myself an email reminder.

In addition, I have to make sure that I take at least two half days completely off from any of the go go go do do do activities. At least two half days to give the nervous system a rest, a soothing bath in simplicity. This could include things like hanging out, cooking, gardening, etc…anything that isn’t something that I gotta do!

And finally, the third part of this triparate adventure is the bit that started this whole thing to begin with…getting to bed early enough to get enough sleep by wake up time. And what would be enough sleep? Well in a pinch I can get by on 4 or 5 hours, so we are not talking pinches here. And on a steady basis I can get by on 6 hours so we are not talking getting by, either.

This is going to be a week of full-on minimal necessary sleep required to avoid all of the bad stuff I was ranting on about way up at the beginning of this post. So 7 hours minimum, 8 hours preferred, 7.5 hours averaged over the week. That’s 52½ hours by this time next week. Plenty of time to get my dream calendar up to date!

And how is your nervous system doing on this fine and glorious day? Are you grappling with sleep, exhaustion, and overwhelm? Do you need a vacation? No better time than now to take care of your most important asset!

Pleasant dreams!

photo by wolfgang staudt