1up — How I got an extra life

Photo by Steve Harrris on Unsplash

I always wanted to change on each and every new year or on my birthday which unfortunately comes every year reminding the remaining. I take a resolution that I will not be the same. But, nothing was written down or planned to make it happen. Although I do change and also 98% of the molecules in my body are replaced every year, I was still the same old “me” without plans to change.

On my 30th birthday, I decided that I will not be the same and I will be forming new habits, removing all my bad habits, working on something better that might give me a greater sense of purpose. But it was almost the same as the past years’ resolution, which was unplanned or nothing is written down.

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TLDR;

1. What else can you do if you can’t spend 30 minutes putting down your plan at least? Let alone achieving it.
2. Write down what you want to do, it is important to achieve your goals or forming habits. Planning is everything. “The old school policy of writing down once goes to mind sooner than to say it thousand times works!”
3. Keep your phones away at night and give your brain a kickstart by solving something complex (like a math problem) soon after you wake up, which will push you out of bed easily.
4. Stick with the top 3 habits, don’t overwhelm yourself with 20 different things.
5. Keep the first habit as simple as it can be, reading a book, watering plants, etc., It is important to feel the instant gratification, the sense of accomplishment to get going to the next one.
6. It is not important to do everything on day 1, the goal is to form habits, not how long you do it, start with baby steps. Just read a page, meditate for 5 minutes, etc.,
7. Push yourself to the next level every few days, until you reach your desired goal and then push further (in my case, I do it every 9 days and once I reach my goal, I plan on what I can add next)

I realized the mistake on the first day of 2021, On new year's eve, I did consider taking a resolution, this time a different one, I decided to write things down, doesn’t matter if I am doing it or not, I will at least write it down. I felt that the least I can do is write it. I started to write about what I am going to do this year. That changed everything drastically with a spark of achieving things with a compounding effect. I was busy for a couple of days (yeah! weekend.) and on Sunday night, It just took me 30 minutes to plan my next 1 month of my personal life.

My first draft for the plan (yeah I know it looks shit with my handwriting)

I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with too many items to perform per day, so I decided to stick with 3 habits maximum and 30 minutes each as an end goal. That requires 1.5 hours extra in my daily routine, which is quite complex to accommodate along with my bad sleeping habits. So, the first thing that I should be doing is fixing my sleeping habit and gaining extra hours by getting a good sleep quality. My sleep hours were almost 11 PM to 7:30 / 8 AM (yeah mostly 9 hours per day with the worst quality, I still used to wake up sleepy), it wasn’t too difficult to reduce the hours, set my alarm for 6 AM, and wake up from next day, I have tried that like 100s of times before and I failed to keep it consistent for more than 3 days.

I believe that a night of quality sleep is better than more hours of sleep. I once had this surge of energy for the whole day when I was waking up early and was doing wonders in learning programming in my college days, but I had to fall back into a bad routine soon without a system. I did have the same surge of energy a few months ago, and I did the same mistake of not forming a system, instead wake up by setting up an alarm at 6 AM, which after few days, I slept off by snoozing the alarm because I couldn’t resist falling asleep.

How did I solve it?

I started setting up alarms to gradually meet my goal, I set up my alarm to 7 AM at first, which I personally felt that I can achieve easily as most of my sleep after 7 AM was quite disturbed anyways. The plan for subsequent days was to reduce 15 minutes every 9th day. 6:45, 6:30, 6:15, and finally to 6 AM. I am finally able to achieve the mark of 6 AM and constantly wake up at 6 AM and my current goal is to reach 5 AM and sleep at 10 PM.

How did I wake up?

I realized how distracting my phone can be for me, maybe it is the same for you too, who knows? you know only when you realize that. I read an article that suggested setting an alarm and keep your phone away from the bed where you need to get out of bed to switch off the alarm. It doesn’t end there, because you might switch it off, but you might go back to bed because you are still groggy, so it requires effort to warm up your brain. I have an alarm app on my phone that requires me to solve 4 maths problems within a minute to stop the alarm from not ringing again even louder.

It’s not just about sleeping early, having quality sleep, and waking up early right? because you are going to gain a few extra minutes/hours, it’s important to utilize that in a good way, probably to form habits instead of just relaxing on the couch with a coffee mug.

I always had 100s of different items that I wanted to do on my daily basis, but I know I can’t do 100 things together, so I decided to stick with the top 3 habits I wanted to form on a daily basis, which will lead to other habits automatically. Keep the first habit as simple as it can be, reading a book, watering plants, etc., It is important to feel the instant gratification, the sense of accomplishment to get going.

The top 3 that came to my mind was:

1. Reading any book — 30 minutes per day
2. Meditation — 30 minutes per day
3. Reading Bhagavad Gita — 30 minutes per day
   (Why? on the other article coming soon. I tag myself spiritual rather than religious though.)

There is no 4th one, not adding anything extra for now! Focus is very important to achieve goals. Once achieved, push further.

To achieve my top 3 goals, I need at least 1.5 hours, which is not easy as for the first 3 days, I just added 10 minutes each, which I think should be easy for almost anyone if you don’t pick up your phone browsing any social network or reading emails first thing in the morning.

I was able to do all of my top 3 goals for almost 9 days in a row, yeah I just spent 10 minutes on each of those, sometimes less, sometimes more, but I formed the habit of doing it one after the other mindlessly because it was easy and it took less time. When I gradually reduced my wake-up time from 7 AM to 6:45 AM, I distributed that extra 15 minutes that I gained to my top 3 habits, so now instead of spending 10 minutes, I started spending 15 minutes on each.

How do I know to push my alarm?

It was quite simple actually, after 3–4 days from the start of waking up at 7 AM, I started being awake for almost 10-15 minutes earlier, our brain works in mysterious ways, the moment you set an alarm and start waking up on a particular set time constantly, you actually don’t need an alarm anymore, your body’s internal clock adjusts to it and put you on awake mode when it is the right time. Just like how you start feeling sleepy at night when your bedtime is near.

What’s next?

1. Fix my go-to bedtime
2. Fix my work’s focus timing to increase productivity
3. Add more items to my routine that will make me even better
4. Include monthly, weekly, yearly items to the routine planned ahead (like, paying bills on a particular day, plan vacations ahead, etc.,)

All these may feel like it’s not simple as it sounds, but when you spend 20–30 minutes planning and putting things on paper and in your calendar, things will happen as if it’s on autopilot mode.

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You can read everything about how sleep affects your life and fixing it will automatically improve your life:
Joe Rogan Experience #1109​ — Matthew Walker

And this is my life’s journey Across Dreams as a short story.