I went back to work on Thursday after two and a half weeks of holiday. A week and a half into the holiday, after being inspired by the book Multipliers, by Liz Wiseman. I felt motivated to get started again. When the time came to actually put my finger out and do something though I found it a lot harder than I anticipated. Part of that feeling is that let’s face it, it’s nice to be able to do exactly what you want all day. I like my job, but I like being on holiday even better.

The other thing that frustrated me was that I felt I was wasting the spare time I did have available to me in the evenings. I wasn’t doing anything useful, I wasn’t doing anything that made me feel good and I still went to bed later than I wanted to. As this is something that should be within my span of control I tried to determine what I would like my evenings to look like.

Living alone I often turn on the tv as background noise. When it’s on, it won’t just provide noise though, it will also distract me. Even if I don’t care at all about what’s on, I will read less and go to bed later when I turn on the tv. I have decided to try and keep the tv off and spend more time reading. I tried this on Thursday evening and it worked very well. I admit that the results of one evening aren’t exactly meaningful or consistent, but I’m carefully optimistic and will continue the experiment.

The other goal is to get to bed a bit earlier. By earlier I mean that I would prefer to be in bed around midnight. I’m a night owl. I don’t like mornings and people advocating that getting up really early will make you feel better and benefit your career have clearly never tried to talk to me before 8:30 AM.

I love evenings. Even when I’ve been tired all day, I will perk up around 10 PM. This means that at 11:30 PM when my Fitbit starts buzzing to tell me that it’s time to get up and go to bed I feel like the best part of the day has only just started. I ignore the buzzing. The more tired I’ve felt during the day, the harder it is to get up and get to bed at a reasonable time. It’s a downward spiral.

As humans, we have a certain amount of discipline and restraint that we can use each day. There is more if we are well rested, but the supply is limited. So by the end of the day, I will have used most if not all of my “making smart decisions that don’t have an immediate reward” ability for that day. I guess this might explain why or how I can be so very disciplined in almost every other area, but I’m still incapable of managing my own bedtime.

My current working theory is this: Reading will make me feel better than watching television. If I can manage to read for one or two hours in the evening that should be an enjoyable way to spend the evening and make me feel like I accomplished something. Hopefully, this feeling of accomplishment will make it easier to go to bed on time. If it works, it will mean that I’m better rested, which will make it easier to make smart decisions. If only I can keep this going long enough to make it a habit (which I think means I have to be consistent for around 60 days), I might finally have found a solution for this 38-year struggle.
Fingers crossed!