Day 14 (sort of)

A new lesson was learned on day 9-13. I drove up to Pennsylvania for the first time by myself to visit my dad and the rest of the family. Since I didn't plan in advance but wanted to get there before dark I left and missed my 7 P.M nap. After this it was a series of missing naps and oversleeping at night for a few hours. I learned that changing the environment can change the results a LOT. This will be worth consideration in my other experiments. No matter, today is day 14 and I plan to finish strong by hitting all scheduled naps and staying awake the full period (I'm still tired enough that I can claim this as an accomplishment).   Okay. I can now give a decent review of my two weeks. I have been with energy and so drowsy I could only keep my eyes open for 3 or 4 seconds tops. I can say that one benefit of the everyman sleeping schedule is a new appreciation of time. I have arrived at the conclusion that while there is a long list of hobbies, goals, and new things everyone secretly wants to pursue, even with more time they're only a little more likely to do them. I have come this conclusion because while staying up during the adaption period, you have to put forth a lot of time towards tasks of low value and low thought activities. During this, I realized something very similar happens during the day.


I would do what I absolutely had to do, then make no attempt to do the other activities as if the next day I would be in the perfect mood to do it. I am starting to believe less and less in "feelings" to get things done. God's honest truth is you'll likely be similar tomorrow to today. Ironically, this seems to be one of the self answering dilemmas. How can you be different tomorrow than today in order to feel like getting something done? Action and thought go hand in hand. It often seems like the thought preceded the action, this is possible sometimes. For the most part, this is incorrect though because with that thought generally some small action is likely to happen almost immediately. So to be (or not to be?) different than yesterday, do what you didn't want to do yesterday and eventually you'll form the habit of "feeling" like getting things of a nature done. A-Ha!

As an example, I pondered someone who is dying. Friends and relatives may be begging the man upstairs for more time. Now there is nothing wrong with this picture, this does happen, and sometimes that prayer is answered. My new thoughts were this: many people probably wish they had accomplished or behaved differently during they're lifetime. I am sure many reach a point even with plenty of time living wishing they had "more time" to learn or do. The staggering truth is there is a good deal of complacency occurring here. 
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. 2 months a year...on average, I know for a fact this is raising and is almost assuredly higher for the younger age groups. When you watching that T.V you were not getting any closer, Jack. At best you were watching something educational and (maybe) heard something of use. Maybe we don't have to trash all the T.V's but maybe we could cut this back for better spent time. It makes me think of the movie fight club. After a month the main character claimed to no longer miss television. I have a feeling this is another (bad?) habit issue. We think we need to take a break after working for 8 hours, but who wrote that rule? It seems that is what we have grown accustom to, and come to expect, therefore we made it true in our lives. Future experiment idea: cut out tv altogether for a few weeks or a month. Celebrity alert! Oprah grew up only watching one hour of television a day, I wonder if that had any lasting effect?

I just found a blog confirming and adding to my hypothesis: On day 24 this person (Erica) broke down and watched television, just short of her one month goal. Her final conclusions were best said by her, "Not watching TV this month gave me a lot of time to think about how this little experiment was improving my life.  And the answer was: not much.  I didn’t fill the non-TV hours with things like organizing my closet or mastering the perfect push-up, I spent them sitting and relaxing, just like I would if the TV was on.  So by day 24 I turned on the TV...
I realized that TV is not the impediment to my productivity, my laziness is the impediment to my productivity." It seems that T.v is not at fault, we are just great at finding scape goats to fill the time we should be doing something. After all, I know I use quite a bit of time checking my Facebook multiple times a day. It is a internal change needed.  You can read more at http://muchmoremuchier.com.


So to wrap it up, this experiment was worth it for the added perspective. I still am tired, but I did not stick well enough to the schedule. I will not be continuing because I have another job to start soon and hitting success will just be ruined by my new work hours. I do plan to dibble-dabble with biphasic sleep almost immediately. Finally, plan exactly when a experiment ends and what you expect for the success/failure line. I succeeded because my line was basically defined as I could oversleep if it happened, but I had to put forth the effort to only sleep on schedule (stuck to that pretty well). I did not define a clear ending time unfortunately so now I am stuck at the point of was last night my last needed night or is tonight? They're both running off of day 14 after all...

And for my next trick, my 7 PM nap today was interesting. My alarm was on my desk. I woke with it next to me a hour and a half later. Apparently I got up, grabbed it, silenced it, and took it back to bed with me in victory.