lads today I am introducing a revolutionary concept to you. we are deliberately going WITH the body on this blog and not against it.
obvious caveat that this routine will seem insane to some of you. and that is kind of the point. it's MY routine.
my hope with this is that you will see that IF you are capable of this (e.g. you're a student or self employed or remote work), you can be a bit more insane and free from the protestant in your brain!!! it's not real! do whatever the fuck you want!!! I am writing this on company time!!!!!!!!!!
presenting...
THE SECOND SLEEP
but first let's look at the Problem Work Day. the Normal Work Day.
if I have a 'normal' 9-5 schedule:
if I start work at 9am like a normal human, I'm in my brain and find it difficult to concentrate. I struggle to concentrate, struggle to get myself moving, and by the time I start work it's usually 10am.
I then hate everything. I rush through my morning routine because I just need to start work. I don't take time to exercise or do any longer hygiene routines than bare minimum
I do a few good hours of work until about 1 or 2pm. then I am exhausted from fighting the audhd in my head and also the caffeine high has worn off. I crash
I spend 2-5pm in a morass of miserable sludge staring aimlessly at spreadsheets and grammars, thinking NO thoughts
after 5pm I am so exhausted from this that I have to sleep. usually for 2-3 hours. this is the sensory recovery sleep and it does not matter how much I sleep the night before. if I am exhausted sensorily, I need this sleep. so now I'm sleeping for 12+ hours a day. which is not healthy.
I wake up. it's 7 or 8pm. I can do nothing as I have no energy. I have to get food
it's 9pm
I stay in my bed watching mindless nonsense until I fall asleep
rinse and repeat
so now let's look at my weird routine that just WORKS for me. it won't for you. again, my point is to make you reconsider what you 'have' to do IF you have that flexibility. (if you don't, I'm sorry. you should.)
SLEEPY MONK SECOND SLEEP
6:30am: wake up and immediately start working in bed. don'ttttttt shoot me don't shoot me I love sleep and I hate mornings actually. but. I find that when my brain is fully online I get in my own way. I get distracted, interested, obsessive, whatever. so I deliberately wake up blearily, open my laptop, lie in bed in the dark, and work until about 10. these are my most productive hours of the day for distraction-free work, but NOT deep slow creative work. I am still half-asleep but these hours are GREAT for emails, spreadsheets, replying to comments, churning out some writing if I already have a plan. etc
10-11ish: get up From Bed. meander slowly thawing out. become presentable
11-12ish: go to cafe. work for several hours. zoom zoom nice caffeine and nice atmosphere. yes if you are curious it took me almost a year to get my sensory tolerance up to the point where this was a daily option. if you are curious about this, please ask! it was a long and fraught process and I happy to talk
2-3ish: come home, an exhausted and broken shell of my former self. at this point the lack of sleep is really catching up.
3ish: THE SECOND SLEEP. two to three hours!! I CLONK out. instant KO. it's BEAUTIFUL.
5-6pm: wake up! feel AMAZING. feel REGENERATED. get another hour or two of work done if I have to. if not, it's a brand new day! my sensory overload is massively recovered from the morning! I want to socialise! I'm happy!
6pm+ : normal fun evening with way more energy than I've EVER had after work before!
11pm: go to bed for normalcore sleep time
THE SECOND SLEEEP GUYS THE SECOND FUCKING SLEEP
this is the CRUX. what am I talking about? is it a nap??? idk man, is 2 or 3 hours a nap? is it a sleep??? some factors here why this is accommodating my body:
I need more than 8 hours sleep regularly.
I am also very stupid in the evenings and hate working then on 'work' stuff, want to be creative and social.
but I am also dumb in the afternoons? god made me to snuggle girls in the afternoons and watch david attenborough. that's my energy pattern.
the second sleep plan enables me to go to bed at a normal time (11pm) enabling me to have a social life;
but also do the requisite amount of work in the hours I work best (early morning);
AND recover from sensory overload with the 2-3 hours I need for that after work
it's amazing. it's wonderful. it's a god-send.
but I resisted it for years. I had clues for a while that I liked this weird pattern: in university I would deliberately wake up very early to work for a few hours from 5-8ish, and then go back to sleep and get up at a normal time. when doing various monastic stays I loved the clarity of the early morning.
but the given wisdom was that once you're up...you're up. if you love the clarity of the early morning etc etc, that is equated to...being disciplined? adding extra hours on TOP OF what you are already doing?
no thanks. I love sleep and I do not love work. why would I want to do more of it??
and everybody else that got up early was equally as functional at 4pm. I am a gooey affectionate blob at 4pm. so...maybe I needed more sleep in the night? but if I got up at 9am, I was anxious and stressed? so...?
then of course I needed the sensory recovery time, which nobody else I knew did. great.
the one other great thing about this routine is that it shows you just how deeply people relate energy levels to morality. I get up at 5am and I'm seen as 'disciplined' and a 'go-getter'. after I spend a day outside, I get home at 5pm and I sleep for three hours and I'm seen as 'lazy' and 'pitiable' and 'weak'.
okay???
so here's what I want you to do. in honour of my beloved second sleep. some homework from meichenxi: how does your body like to work? do you know? if not, what tiny changes can you make to experiment? what's one weird thing that works for you?
you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. yes, this has consequences often, and you will have to work around those (the reason I resisted this routine for so long is because of my long term ex. nobody loves being woken at 5am!).
but many of the things we want are actually completely fine. we're just productivity- and protestant-pilled enough to think they're 'abnormal' and therefore wrong.