Ask the Internet

Last week I posted a question on reddit.com asking, ‘Freelancers with kids… what are some of the struggles you experience working as a freelancer with a family that depends on you?’ One of the most common answers, and the one with the most upvotes, had to do with not getting enough sleep and the influence that had on productivity. I can definitely identify with this.

Sleep Deprivation

My wife and I have been fortunate in that all of our boys began sleeping through the night pretty early on. For the first several weeks though, it was torture. I remember especially, because it wasn’t that long ago, the feeding schedule we kept for our twin boys. When they first came home from the hospital they were really slow eaters and they had to eat every three hours… both of them!

Double Tired

They slept in a makeshift nursery, in the side area of our room (which is now our office). After their 9pm feeding, we would swaddle them up tight and place them in their swings (yes, they slept in baby swings… pediatrician approved). The first alarm would go off at midnight. This was my shift. I’d get up, make a bottle, wake up one of the twins, change his diaper, feed him for 30-45 minutes, burp him, re-swaddle him, then I would do it all over again with the next one. Finally, sometime between 1:30-2am I’d crawl back into bed. The next alarm would go off at 3am, but this was Rachel’s shift so I slept right on through until 6am. Wow, just writing about this makes me tired.

Sleep and Productivity

These days we get quite a bit more sleep. But almost any parent will tell you that once you have children, you never sleep the same. Even without the occasional middle of the night interruptions, we find ourselves sometimes staying up too late just so we can have some ‘us’ time and getting up really early to get a head start on a very demanding day. I can’t deny that this lack of sleep, especially over a long period of time, has definitely had an effect on my productivity.

Hours vs. Productive Hours

This got me thinking about all of those times I would sit down with my journal and try to write and re-write my schedule. Out of all of the pages in my composition notebook, I must have dedicated at least 10 or 15 pages during the last 6 months to re-working my schedule in an effort to squeeze in every hour that I possibly could, because the more hours I could find in my week, the more work I could get done. I started thinking about those hours and how many of them I don’t spend so wisely, and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t need more hours, I need more productive hours.’

I’ve experienced it before. Every once in a while I have those days when I just burn through my to-do list and get a ton of stuff done. Every once in a while I look back on my day and feel very accomplished for all of the tasks I’ve completed and all of the ground I’ve covered working toward my goals. Most days, however, I find myself straying from my schedule, easily distracted, and constantly having to reign myself in. What can I do to have fewer of those kind of hours, and more productive, burn-through-the-to-do-list hours?

An Experiment

There’s a lot of productivity stuff out there. I know because I’ve read articles and listened to podcasts and had many conversations on the subject. I’ve drawn some of my own conclusions and I’d like to do an experiment. During the next 28 days I’m going to take some of my ideas and put them into practice and record my experiences daily in my journal. Each week I’m going to focus on a different aspect of my approach to finding more productive hours in my day.

This week I’m starting with me. One of the things I haven’t been doing a good job of is taking care of myself. With 5 young, needy, dependent, very vocal, persistent boys, with whom I am very much in love, I seldom make time to really care for myself. On the outside this looks like selflessness and sacrifice, and in many ways it is, but if I don’t take care of myself, I am ultimately depriving my family and my work of the best version of myself.

What do I mean by “taking care of myself?” I may find a few more answers along the way, but here are a few I’ve identified:

-GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP

This is where we started our conversation today, and this is where it starts for me the most. When I haven’t gotten enough sleep, I want to eat poorly, I don’t care for exercising, I don’t rest as well during my day. Sleep is on the top of my list of things I need to do better, because everything else seems to hinge on it. My goal is to get into a rhythm of getting 7.5 hours of sleep each night, or 6 at night with a 1.5 hour nap. Just writing this out, it looks like a lot of hours to me, but I have to remember, it’s about productive hours, the quality of the hours, not the quantity. I’m basing the duration of sleep on the circadian sleep cycle. Each cycle lasts for about 1.5 hours and peaks at the end, during your most wakeful period. Research has shown that waking up at the peak of your 4th or 5th cycle (6 or 7.5 hours) helps you to be most alert during the day. I’m going to use a sleep calculator I found at sleepyti.me to determine my sleep schedule for the night.

-PROPER DIET

I can tell a difference when I eat junk/processed foods versus when I eat healthy, home-made food. When I eat poorly I don’t focus as well, I’m more easily distracted, I want to eat more bad foods, I don’t have as much energy, etc. I’ve even read that poor diet can have a negative effect on sleep, which in turn makes you more likely to eat poorly. What an awful cycle. Alternatively, when I eat the right kinds of foods I have more energy and I feel more focused and “even” throughout the day. My goal is to monitor what I am taking in each day and try to maintain a good balance of nutrition. I’m going to use an app called MyFitnessPal to keep track of what I’m eating daily. This might mean that I take more time to prepare food for myself throughout the day, but if it means that I find more productive hours, I’m in!

-EXERCISE

I actually love to run. I would go every day if I could. The problem lately has been that it has been difficult to find any time outside of working hours that doesn’t take time away from my family. I also would like to be doing some strength training, but I’m not quite as excited about that. My goal is to run at least 4 days/week for 30 minutes and to do some form of strength training 4 days/week for 15 minutes (including stretching). With prep and cool-down that’s almost 5 hours/week, but it’s totally worth it if I can have more energy and stamina during my working hours.

-MEDITATION/REFLECTION

I don’t necessarily mean sitting on the floor cross-legged with my eyes closed (though I’m not counting that out). I am rarely alone with my thoughts, so when I am, I feel like my brain is gushing, trying to catch me up on all of the information it is trying to process. This also means that I don’t really have much quiet time with my brain; a time when there’s no noise or distraction, and I can just sit and think about nothing. My goal is to find some solitude for at least 15 minutes/day and split that time between gathering my thoughts and trying not to think at all.

-EXPRESSION

I enjoy many forms of artistic expression, and I also love processing my thoughts on paper. I am pretty good at making time for these activities, but they are mostly spontaneous and not well structured. This is good in a lot of ways because some of my best ideas come out of those spontaneous moments when “inspiration hits.” I would like to continue allowing for these spontaneous moments, but to also make regular, purposeful time for expression. This could come in the form of writing in my journal, writing and composing music, painting, drawing, taking pictures, etc. I may even schedule a different one for each day. My goal is to take 30 minutes/day for 5 days each week.

-PERSONAL HYGIENE/APPEARANCE

I was really debating putting this one on here, but I want to be real and the truth is that personal hygiene and appearance can have such a strong connection to ones sense of self-worth that it can heavily influence productivity. I am embarrassed to say that some mornings I’m so busy with getting the boys up and ready that I forget to brush my teeth or put on deodorant before I rush out the door. I wear glasses a lot more than contacts these days and I rarely style my hair. Yesterday I bought a new pair of jeans and realized that this was the first time in 4 years that I’d worn a pair of jeans without gaping holes in the knees. Some nights I’m so worn out from getting the kids through their night-time routine that I simply don’t feel like taking a shower. Like I said, it’s embarrassing to confess some of this stuff, but I would venture that there are some out there who are going through the same thing so I wanted to address it. My goal is to write out and adhere to my own personal morning and night-time routine.

There are many other practices to cover in the weeks that will follow, but for this week, for the sake of my family and my work, I will focus on me. I will be writing about my experiences daily, sharing some of my experiences through social media, and giving a recap with next week’s article.