First Things First: Sleep

First initiative for Project: Young. I have decided that I will start by getting enough sleep first. Because without having enough sleep, I won't even have the energy and concentration needed for me to perform any other tasks. But I also can't just magically create extra hours needed for me to sleep enough. Sacrifices will have to be made, some things will have to go. What's more, a high amount of stoic discipline will have to be in order, so that I can actually do it.

The most obvious tradeoff, would be my gaming habits. And trust me, this is a pretty huge habit I will need to adjust. Considering the fact that I have recently received my ultra big screen iMac. AND the fact that I recently made a group of NEW friends through playing Dota. Yeah, I only met 2 of them IRL before, but I chat with the rest of them over Skype, so we are sort of friends? But that's a separate thing, I will update on this when there is more progress.

So as you can see, sleeping early is not a simple matter for me. Considering that most of my weekday hours is taken by the company I work for, there is honestly very little ME time. Weekends fly by like nothing. All this time, I have created extra time, but taking it out of my sleeping hours. But if I think about it, that's not right. Most people would agree that a minimum of 7 hours of sleep every night is needed to keep our bodies functioning right.

But more than just the body, I think it also affects my face, skin, and most importantly my mental state. If I really continue to deprive myself of sleep like that, I will have to spam coffee more often. Otherwise, I just won't be able to even do anything at work and in life. So it's a tough tradeoff for me, but one that I will have to make. And I think that with a little bit of good time management, I should be able to do it.

So here is what I am going to do. Besides having action plan items, I shall hereby allocate a timeslot for my daily activities. I know that the original idea was to keep it flexible for the action plans, and that has worked out fine so far. However, what has been constantly suffering is my sleep time, and that should not continue. Without further ado, here's what my usual weekday should look like:

• 7 AM - Wake up, go to work 
• 6 PM - End work, come home
• 7 PM - Reach home, eat dinner
• 8 PM to 10 PM - ACTION ITEM
• 10 PM - Shower
• 10:15 PM to 11:30 PM - Dota
• 12 PM - Sleep

On some levels, it feels a bit to me like too much micromanagement. I mean, I would feel overly stifled if I only had so much time to do what it is I wanted to do... The way I see it, I only have 5 solid hours to myself each day. Then 7 hours sleep. The other whopping 12 hours is given to my work and commute! Wow, it's shocking when I put it into perspective like this. But what can I do right? I need to work for cash, gotta think about Project: Rich and my future. So yes, probably only 1 or 2 games of Dota per night.

With that being said however, I think there is still a little bit of flexibility in this plan. I mean, if I reach home earlier and dinner is not done, I can shower first. And if my action item does not in fact take up the full 2 hours, I can perhaps shower earlier, play more Dota, or do other stuff. It seems rather sad that I will have to live my life by these 5 hours a day, but I guess it's not a unique problem. All of us workers are constrained to that. Just need to find some ways to squeeze in some extra me time during lunch or something.

So there we have it. This shall be my resolution to sleep for a full 7 hours per night. Here's to hoping I will have a better mental state and health! I still have many many plans to execute!