Sam posted Sunday and yesterday about his goals (axing polyphasic sleep from them yesterday). Among them:
- Blog once per day from here to the end of 2006
- Return to the Lost Path that is the Atkins diet - including cutting out caffeine
- Start rising at 5am every day, and shift to biphasic sleep (so include a nap during the afternoon/early evening low)
This is my "me too". I think a huge amount of my stress level can be attributed to the fact that I can't manage my time effectively. I can't manage my time effectively because I'm always too tired to focus. I'm always tired because I'm busy, true, but I also don't make sane sleep a priority, I consume way too much caffeine, and I'm carrying around a lot of weight that saps my energy. All of my goals are designed to help my stress level and sanity. Blogging should keep me honest about it.
I will make one edit to my goals: I won't be eliminating caffeine entirely. I have an entire box of green tea in my desk at work. It's got all that nifty antioxidant goodness, and about a quarter of the caffeine of coffee. I don't feel like a midmorning cup should throw off either my diet or my sleep - my naps are all going to be sufficiently later than that. I really enjoy it, and something about green tea tells my brain it's time to focus on what I'm doing. (Grading, when I had my cup a bit ago.)
And for Will's benefit - I promise I'm not going back on the diet out of some kind of body image obsession. I'd like to look better, true, and I'd like to be able to fit in nicer clothes, naturally. But the compulsion to go back on the diet actually comes from my memory about how much more energy I had, when I was on Atkins, before.
Hee. I know. I'm leery of Atkin's because of the whole 'eliminate the source of most of your water soluble nutrients from your diet' bits, but as long as you're healthy and happy, it's a winner.
I worry more about the biphasic/polyphasic sleep and what it means for how littler I already am able to talk with you. :P
I'd probably be more leery of the Atkins diet if I were, in fact, going to be eliminating the source of most of my water soluble nutrients from my diet. Honestly, though, I'm not aware of any nutrients in my diet currently, which is approximately 60% sugar, 60% refined flour products, 60% fats (frequently in the partially hydrogenated no-no category) and for kicks, 20% protein and veggies, usually prepared in such a way as to eliminate actual nutritional content. I'm aware these numbers add up to 200%; I'm easily eating twice as much as I should, altogether. Any diet that eliminates that neverending flow of sugar, processed junk, and bad fats is going to be an improvement, and the OMG ALMOST NO CARBS EVER phase is very brief.
I did feel great last time I did it. Going off of the diet, in fact, was more a got-lazy-on-vacation thing than a this-isn't-working or this-is-unpleasant thing.
The biphasic sleep thing should actually hopefully mean that I get to talk to you more. I'm less scatterbrained and more focussed when I'm not so damn tired all of the time, so getting appropriate (and optimized) sleep should help me get things I have to do done, and free up more time for things I want to do. :)