Sleep Challenge Part 2

Determined to kick off the new year as the healthiest version of myself, I met with a nutritionist and Korean acupuncturist over the last month (both of which deserve a blog post in their own right).  Their biggest piece of advice?  I need to get more sleep.  Apparently 7-8 hours (which is actually really good for me!) is not quite enough.  I need to be getting 8-9 hours each night! ("No drugs, just sleep" -- my acupuncturist says).

The crazy thing is that never before could I actually do that than here in Seoul, where I set my own hours and have tremendous freedom over my own time.  But since I have work calls until 10pm on most work nights and the earliest I can reasonably be in bed is 10:30pm, that means not setting the alarm until 7:30am!  While I know Tyler would be thrilled with this new development, the truth is somehow this is really hard psychologically for me.  In fact, when I read a new year's blog post entitled "The 5am Club" (all about how successful people wake up at 5am and embark on their projects while the rest of the world still sleeps), I was more drawn to the "challenge" of waking up at 5am than to the supposedly "easy" task of staying snug and warm in bed.  The former is somehow more exciting and certainly seems "more productive" than staying in bed for hours on end.

(As an aside though: the #1 sign you need more sleep is when you read a Quora post on spending time in prison and think "Ah, prison seems kindda nice" when the first answer is "Sleep: During extended lock downs and prolonged periods of cell time, nothing beats a good nap"... in fact, I challenge you to read this whole article here and not think that there's something "nice" about how the inmate describes his time in jail, highlighting what's missing in many of our busy lives... like sleeping, writing letters, playing chess, and reading)

What's more, when my nutritionist said I should be feeding my body not only with healthy foods, but also with healthy (e.g. stress-free) thoughts, my heart skipped a beat with anxiety at my "homework" to schedule one hour each day of "doing nothing."  For me, multi-tasking or even jumping out of a plane somehow is easier than having an hour of "dead" time (literally "nothing" -- like, no reading, no journaling, no yoga... what does that even mean?!)

So as I rush to finish this blog post in the four minutes left before a work call, I am announcing my intention for a new challenge: getting 8-9 hours of sleep every night for the next two months through the end of March with one cheat day each week (my dear friend Giselle tells me that the whole 21-days to create a habit is all bunk; article here) -- science tells us it's actually a bit over two months, 66 days to be exact.

If anyone wants to join in, let me know -- we can compare sleep app scores! :)  'Til then, happy sleeping... I guess I'll be hibernating for the rest of this winter!