Skip to main content

Sleeping to sickness

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder that most people think of when someone says they have trouble sleeping, pop culture has put such spin on it. But there are other disorders too like sleep deprivation (not enough sleep), sleep apnea (snoring/breathing trouble while sleeping, caused by reduced oxygen level); there are also other terrors like acting out dreams in the physical world, awake but muscles are paralysed, teeth grinding and shouting out dreams. But, I'm suffering from the most common form of sleep disorder of the 21st century; I always wake up tired, no it is not hypersomnia. This post is going to be sort of self-shaming one, in order to change my habit.

Confession: I'm a big YouTube consumer, I consume too much to even remember them all the next day even though I follow quality contents still they are useless if I forget them all. Almost all of the channels I follow hosts, education, science, history, general health, environment, computer and related stuff; my entertainment is made of stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and cartoon consumed from the same app. One of the best and the one that produces the least content is CGP Grey. Time and again he was successful in making me feel bad about the way I sleep, I don't have a schedule and I watch videos and read something from the phone at night in bed. This is my disorder, I sleep by 1 or 2 am and try to catch up on sleep of 7 hours by sleeping till 9 or 10 am or even 11 and making sure I will always feel tired and lose early productive hours of the day. 

Irregular sleep cycle (ripped off CGP Grey)


Again on 1st of May, CGP Grey was successful in doing this, and I promised myself to follow his guidelines for this pandemic lock-down. And yet, here I'm writing this self-shaming post. I planned too many things and nothing picked-up steam, the reason - VAPID goals; I wanted to be happy and all-star from Day-1, it seems it is not possible and so I'm accepting the ground reality and trying to adapt.

Here is my first SMART goal of the lock-down and I'm declaring it here so I can always count on you to remind me if I'm steering away.
I will go to bed before 10 pm, penultimate hour being no screen-time; there by making sure I get sound sleep of at least 7 hours and I wake up before 7 am everyday, so that I will never wake up tired.
Yes, I have in-built buffer hours to help me at first, we can re-define this goal the next time we meet 😉

Update on 06 Sep 2020:

1.5 month has passed, I'm not able to make any headway. Maybe my goal is not SMART enough, even with buffer. I'm going to try and redefine, with a goal that will guarantee success, trying to win big with small multiple targets.
8 hours of sleep, and waking up before 7am.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular this month

Puththu kovilum Putho tilesum, as they are built

Its the grand Aadi season here in Tamil Nadu wherever you go you'd be followed by awful noise from no mercy speakers masqueraded as a devotional song. Yes, this is the first post dedicated to it. Hindu is not a religion but it's idealism, a way to unite people, that's perfectly constructed by assuming separate task to every God, no single God worship. Hindus moved from nature worship to idol worship, but that doesn't mean that we don't have nature worship we have created an idol for them and continued to worship them in a different form. Snake is a beautiful reptile, I have made friend with few too... Our ancestor found the natural law, 'every living creature on earth is important for the ecosystem to be balanced'. Maybe to make sure snakes are not killed fearing their venom they made them as God too! Not just idol snakes, they are worshipped as they are at their  conquered (from rats and termite)   nest or  puthu . Puthu as it used to be in open
Post a Comment
Expand post »

Up and Close with Sudalai Madan: The Encounter

Night of 13th April all the preparations for the rituals were done in the temple, Sudalaimadan swamy was decorated with flowers, fruits and coconuts; the dedications reached above his chest. My cousin Sudalai Muthu, senior priest of the shrine reached home by late-night got blessings of his father Late Shanmugam Sundaram also previous head priest and blessed the family members in room dedicated for God, then started towards the temple. People have already gathered in huge numbers and were waiting for the Sudalaimada Swamy's arrival at Temple. Different rituals were offered by people to the Lord in order to get the blessings. As it is believed Sudaimada Swamy, the son of Lord Siva used to consume meat in Kailash for this reason he is sent to earth, where he can satisfy his earthy hunger thereby not polluting Kailash. Sree Aaladi Padmanabha Sudalaimada Swamy Temple, Kumarapuram Offering meat to Sudalaimadan is the most important and watchful event of the festival. Many devotees off
Post a Comment
Expand post »

It doesn't have to be crazy at work

It doesn't have to be crazy at work, is the book with that title. The title is almost clickbait, but the gist is printed straight up on the cover of the book; they didn't even wait for the blurb. Jason Fried, the CEO and David Heinemeier Hansson, the CTO of 37Signals (formerly Basecamp) co-authored this book. This book was gifted to me by whom I'd consider to be a mentor because he caught me working "crazy at work", it is rare to see such people who are more inclined to see you as a person instead of a number, he seemed to have taken guidelines from this book to heart, and I'd say it is a good change in this cut-throat corporate. This is yet another book discussion, it is almost as if I am picking books to only learn and not review them; I'm not a reviewer, and I do not have any affiliate account setup that will earn me commission; I'm just going to discuss the ideas that I grasp from the books I read, on to the book The book is about how crazy the wor
Post a Comment
Expand post »

The Difficulty of Being Good

This is not a book review, rather a discussion or an elaboration of what I understood from this book. The author, Gurcharan Das starts by claiming that his path to this book was rather unintentional since he was only trying to settle into his " Vanaprastha " life. He discusses the  goals of life and how every stage of life connects with many goals at the same time. Head on from chapter 1, we dive into the core of the book, "Dharma" the main goal of a good life well-lived apart from 'Moksha'. The best thing about the book is that the chapters are arranged such that Mahabharata's chronological narration is undisturbed, chapters are character-centric and thus dharma is approached from various points of view and Mr. Das never stops throwing questions at us and subtly answering them.  This book could not have come to me at a better time, I considered it non-intrusive advice from an elderly vanaprastha. The sub-text gives away the plot, almost, "The subt
Post a Comment
Expand post »

Product of Govt. aided School, but does it matter?

I started my work life in an MNC, Tier 1 IT service provider. I worked with clients directly since I was able to understand and speak their 'accent'. My second employer is an Italian bank where both my Indian and Italian colleagues praised my spoken, never mind that I almost always fail to communicate. It is funny that I picked up the accent from American sitcoms and cartoons and didn't undergo any sort of training.  I can hear you say "stop this nonsense bragging blog", I will after I manage to sell you the idea 'schooling is important, but schools or education boards are not'.  But why now? why not 2011? when I got the job and the girl? Probably that is the highest point in my life why was not be boastful then! why now? - Again I'm not boasting I'm only trying to convince myself and you, of course. This idea had its inception long back, 2007 was my first year of college I was considered to have a fairly high standard of communication skill in c
Post a Comment
Expand post »