§4 – Sleep Prologue

This entry is part 4 of 13 in the series Changes and Results

I’ve been talking about writing a post about sleep for years. But as I started writing, it turned into a huge article. Which makes sense, because fixing my sleep is the single most important healthy change I have ever made.

I realized that if I wanted to get a sufficient, healthy amount of sleep — let’s say around 8 hours — I would be spending ONE THIRD of my life sleeping. That means sleeping vastly outweighs any other activity in my life. I became determined to optimize the time spent sleeping and to ARRANGE MY LIFE AROUND SLEEPING. This was the critical, first step.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

I only know how much sleep works for me. You’ll need to find out for yourself how much sleep you need. This is another spot where the habit journal will really pay off. If you can track when you go to sleep, when you wake, how much sleep you get, and your quality of sleep, then you can make changes as you review each month.

(more…)

The myth of the bloodless calling

I don’t care how much you say you love your work. If your vision is bold enough, there will soon be a point where your passion is used up before the work ends. Enjoyment does not carry you far enough when you are sailing epic waters.

~ Bryan Ward

slip:4a898.


5,000 Steps to Success

If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don’t think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; if you just think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream even if the end is a long way off, for there are about five thousand steps to be taken before we realize it; and start making the first ten, and stay making twenty after, it is amazing how quickly you get through those five thousand steps.

~ Edwin Land

slip:4a880.


Lake Annecy

Lake Annecy, in Annecy, France.

ɕ


twitter fail

new controls for data/privacy? Yeah! …if I want to uncheck 2,700+ chkboxes (there’s no ‘unck all’) BOO!

ɕ


Insane courage

You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.

~ Benjamin Mee, in We Bought a Zoo, (2011 film)

slip:4a340.


Stop hoarding your best

Creative hoarding is different than other kinds of hoarding. You’re not withholding your treasure from others, you’re withholding it from yourself. You are denying yourself permission to take the best of what you have, here and now, and make it manifest in the world.

~ Bryan Ward

slip:4a893.


How the hammer fails you

Wherever your life has locked you in, wherever force has failed you, put down the hammer: pick up the crowbar.

~ Bryan Ward

slip:4a888.


How Our Certitudes Keep Us Small

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial. The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

~ Wislawa Szymborska from, Polish Poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on the Creative Power of Uncertainty

slip:4ubawi1.

ɕ


Destiny is unavoidable

Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.

~ Jean de La Fontaine

slip:4a525.