Insomnia
by Paolo on Nov.04, 2009, under Meanderings, News
Lately, I’ve been struggling with bouts of insomnia.
Here is the set up:
1) Exhausted from long days and weeks at work without break.
2) Habitually wake up due to night calls.
3) Four years of waking up when the young’uns cry/have nightmares/wet the bed/etc.
Now that I’ve passed a massive deadline and actually have free time, I had a week where I couldn’t sleep. The mental cycle went like this:
1) Feel too tired to work on your projects.
2) Refuse to sleep unless you do something productive.
3) Cannot work to be productive because you are too tired.
4) Refuse to sleep because no work is being done.
5) Check the time and see an hour has passed but refuse to sleep.
6) Barely get any sleep that night because you’ve spent the night trying to work on projects but not getting anywhere.
7) Repeat step 1.
Can't sleep... Must work...
I have been thinking of taking a break, but the first immediate thing I start doing is that I attempt to write on my blog. It’s almost like my mind is refusing to just rest and regroup. So I am writing this publicly to force myself to postpone any projects until Thanksgiving – after my wife’s fashion show and when I take my first real vacation.
I’ll be back. I just have too much to say, create and do. But I know I have to call it when I’m beat. And to spend some time with my family who has missed me.
Gone Fishing!
November 6th, 2009 on 12:59 pm
Ah, sorry to hear that. Sleep problems suck — I know from experience.
Can I recommend you something that helped for me? Split your sleep into two pieces: six hours at night, and a 90-minute nap in the afternoon (no, it can’t be less than 90!)
It may be a tricky adjustment to fit that around everything else, but I personally switched to it within a few days. And after I had, I was a lot more productive: I could get up early *and* stay up late, plus having two “bed times” meant I had two of those bursts of activities where I rush to finish what I’m doing before going to bed.
I even found that once I switched back to a regular eight-hour sleep at night, I could actually do this and wake up at the right time. This may not sound like a big deal, but it really was for me