Sleep

Recently I have felt like my life is spiraling out of control, as much as it ever is at the end of a school semester, but almost more because this is my last semester in school. Every time my life begins to careen into crazy, I grasp for a schedule, and force myself to stay up late enough to sleep at my normal time as I fight exhaustion from waking up earlier. However, this sleep schedule and stress makes my actual work time so much more unfocused than I am used to. Typically I am a very productive person, I amaze people with how much time I can spend volunteering, or talking and yet still get my work done. But with a crazy schedule I start to realize where their amazement comes from.
As much as I cling to a schedule that I have artificially assigned to myself (usually I aim to be in bed by 11 PM and wake up at 730 AM) I wonder if perhaps my most productive time is not a typical 9-5, or perhaps that I am not allowing myself the right amount of sleep. After reading this article about how making sleep a priority made the author's life so much more enjoyable, even if more time was spent sleeping I began to wonder what would happen if I started a similar schedule. I have found, at different times of my life, that either early morning or late night seem to be my most productive. I'm not sure if I attribute that to the fact that no people are in the office at this time, or that I feel the pressure of a deadline, but either way, those times are my most productive.
I began to think about how to determine my most productive period, and how to take advantage of it. But also, I need to allow myself to sleep and awake without an alarm clock. Luckily, school is almost over so I will soon be allowed the freedom of allowing my sleep schedule to adjust itself. Most of my jobs in the past have allowed me to work a fairly flexible schedule, and I hope to be able to grasp that at a new workplace as well. My current boss insists that we are in the office for most of our hours between 9 AM and 5 PM, which is normal, but as this article states, not everyone's productive period is between 9 and 5.
Different people have written about finding and correctly utilizing the most productive hours of your own day. This post I find to be interesting, because this blogger does not discuss the productivity so much as job productivity, being unemployed, but as life productivity. I find that with a schedule I can function well and be productive, as long as I get enough sleep and run it can almost be any schedule, but maybe I will one day find my balance and become my productive self.

Of course.. I write this as I am supposed to be working on a homework assignment... therefore, tonight I will probably not get enough sleep, or the right hours of sleep, but I will make due and soon I will be able to allow my body to regulate itself!

R