Today’s topic is sleep versus productivity.
Now, for years I’ve been an entrepreneur, actually for decades, and one of the things that I keep seeing over in the personal development of business development field is getting up early and the value.
We’ve heard the old axiom “the early bird gets the worm”. But what cost is that? Now, during my career I’ve really focused on getting up early, whether it be for the fitness industry when I owned a gym or for just the entrepreneurial lifestyle – owning a business and wanting to get up before everyone else did so I could be as productive and get ahead of the curve.
What I started doing is getting up at 6am, then it became 530, then 5am, next thing you know I was getting up at 4am in order to get all the things I wanted to do done in the day. This was great for a very short period of time. What I found was I was extremely productive before any of my staff got in or before anybody else woke up that I was doing business with, I had already gotten done two to three hours worth of work and I felt way ahead of the curve.
This was awesome until it wasn’t. Now what I found and you may find yourself is throughout the day, I found myself getting more and more tired. I was a little bit more irritable throughout the day, I was having mood swings, I wasn’t really fun to be around. You know after about my first or second pot of coffee, just to keep myself going and possibly a nap here or there I really started to know that my health and well-being was going by the wayside. Sure, business was on a huge upward trajectory. I was doing all these things before 5am but really as a sacrifice of my relationships.
So one of the things I started to do is in my daily journal I started to write down my bedtime. When I actually went to bed, not necessarily fall asleep, but when I was lying in bed with the anticipation of sleeping, and then when I woke up. And that was great but the key differential that I did was I put what was my rest factor. So for me, I do want to scale from one to five because I find one to ten just is too broad no one seems to pick the the two three four five and six it’s always another, so 1-5 was good for me.
I started recording how I was feeling and also at the end of day was recording my productivity. How productive did I feel I was in the five key areas or the five to thrive? So that’s mind, body soul, relationships, and business as well. And what I found was is when I actually slept in more, so I actually went to bed about the same time but actually slept in, I was actually a lot more productive. Now, I didn’t get as many to dos done on my to-do list but I found that the actual output I was getting was at a much higher level. I was also able to relate to the people around me and just in general enjoyed my days more.
So what I’m going to ask you to do, your call to action today for your daily growth hack, is start writing down in your journal your times when you’re going to bed, when you’re waking up, and more importantly, how are you feeling. If you’re like me and you’re reading these books you know getting up by 5am and there’s you know 5am groups all over facebook and the internet and that’s fantastic if that’s working for you. Something that I found in this stage of my life is actually sleeping in and making sure I’m getting enough rest is the right thing for me. I’ve made a lifestyle for myself that allows me not to have a schedule that’s that tight and maybe you have to get up early and I totally respect that. But really honor your rest and make sure that your rest is serving you in your five key areas.
Love to hear about it in our community, I love to hear your thoughts and how it’s working for you. And of course you can get today’s show notes over at author of your own story.com/sleep or productivity and just as a reminder there’s always going to be new updates on the website, so go over there. You can get our seven-day course on how to be the Author of Your Own Story, totally free as well as our newsletter and all kinds of other goodies.
That’s it for today – I’ll see you tomorrow!
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