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

Family planning, population control, and birth control access

I've always been appalled by doctors sterilizing women without their permission.  Uzbekistan is doing it today and many other countries have forced sterilization for specific regions and races within their country.  One of my friends recently switched birth control and we were looking up different types of birth control.  I read about the progesterone shot that said doctors used to give the shots as a way to prevent African Americans from having children without them knowing.  Melinda Gates gave a TEDX talk where she discussed the desire of people to have smaller families as a way to have an increased standard of living.  If you have fewer children, you can afford to pay for all of their educations, you can afford to feed all of them, and you can continue to work because you don't have to stay home to take care of so many children.  She urges increased access to birth control for all women so they can decide to have smaller families.  People do not want to be sterilized, nor do they want to have children who they cannot support. 

Mechai Viravaidya  discusses birth control in Thailand with a more humorous twist.  He discusses Thailand's campaign to decrease population growth by providing easier access to condoms.  There is a super hero named Captain Condom who visit universities, the police hand out free condoms on the streets and they use witty advertising to encourage people to use condoms as a way to control population naturally.  He also says he will be handing out condoms after his talk but warns "these are Thai sized, so be very careful".

So, use birth control, unless you want a baby now.

S