I don’t know that it’s an idea, so much as simply how my body tends to balance itself out. Left to my own devices during the summer of 2000 i actually split each day in half, sleeping from five to nine in both the morning and evening. This sounds ridiculous, but given a healthy and active list daily schedule it actually suited my needs perfectly and kept me highly energized through my grueling turn as an Orientation Leader.
Of course, there are problems with giving the body exactly what it seems to be asking for. With the exception of my magical two weeks of two-in-one days, my body tends to operate on a clock that is much nearer to 30hour days than 24hour ones, which means if i don’t have a set time to sleep i’ll stay up a handful of hours later every night until finally i’m sleeping the day away because i’m so locked in to my overly long internal clock. Furthermore, my attempts to correct my own sleeping habits tend to make the situation worse; for example, i should have never gone back to sleep this morning rather than do my best to stay awake all day — and here i am blogging about it past 2am.
The solution that has had a larger impact on my days than my quirky sleeping habits (which are endlessly remarked upon in derisive fashion by my roommates) is that i really just don’t waste time anymore. Sure, you could argue that i’m wasting time right now, but i mean something closer to not spending time idly. If i’m on the internet, i’m either writing or catching up on my daily reading … not aimlessly wandering from link to link. If i’m playing guitar i’m either writing or practicing … no idle ad-libbing for hours on end. I tend to break this rule just as much as i follow it, but keeping the idea of maximizing my resources stuck in the back of my head somehow netted me all A’s last semester — something i’ve never accomplished with such a rigorous course load Sure, it involved putting some thing off until the last minute (and stressing my way into the hospital), but somewhere along the way i finally learned to cut down on time-wasting (and unsatisfying) activities like reorganizing my cd collection and rereading my archives when i could be cooking dinner or writing a paper instead..
This semester has an even more ridiculous free-time to work-time ratio than last, and so i’m interested to see how i fare. Also, it would be nice if i could factor actually working into the equation somewhere between sleep and cd reviews, because money is never as evil as they say it is ;)