Archive - May 4, 2018

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# Nicholas Bate writes that "A wake up alarm is crazy. Why plan to wake before your mind/body has had time for refresh, repair and restore?"

I read this just after commenting that "getting ready for work just gets in the way."

Bate goes on to say: "Now setting a time-for-bed alarm, that's a great idea."

Apple introduced the "Bedtime" feature in the iOS clock app with the idea of reminding you when to go to bed based on when you need to rise, thus ensuring you get a regular, decent night's sleep.

A great idea indeed but, unfortunately, work gets in the way. Being on shifts and not getting home until almost 9pm (sometimes later) when "on a late" makes it impossible to have a regular sleep regimen.

Throw in having to get up around 4am for an early shift (when getting my 8 hours would mean ascending the wooden hillock to Bedfordshire at 8pm) and things really start to get untenable.

Maybe I just need different work.

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matthewlang says:

@colinwalker Perhaps different work is what you need.

I'm in the fortunate position of having a pretty regular day most of the time, so I'm usually up before my alarm clock goes off anyway. There's only a few times a month when I need my alarm clock to wake me, and that's when I've been up later than usual the night before.

I don't think I could go to sleep without having an alarm clock for the next morning though. Even though I do usually get up before the alarm goes off, it's nice to have a backup in case I do go back to sleep.

Colin Walker says:

Yeah, it’s just that I don’t know what. I’m a bit trapped in my current role due to a salary that’s probably too high for the skillset because of where it is and who I work for, so moving on or changing career is not such a simple prospect.

Avancee says:

@colinwalker A bed-time alarm is something like what my Oura Ring ends up “teaching” you to have. Waking up has become more or less “get up when you are rested.” But getting to sleep, and especially lately as its analytics have been doing a bedtime window, have been pretty interesting in making a bed-time alarm.

Matt Rutherford says:

I have found (with age?) that I value sleep quality more and more. A commute into London with relative sanity means that I get up at 5.30am - so I find that 10pm is my absolute cut-off - I don't have an alarm for it, but I recognise the discipline required.

If I do it correctly (no screens, cool room, right time of eating & drinking), I wake up between 10 and 20 minutes before my alarm.

I still have the alarm as a back-up/insurance - but if I focus on the quality of the sleep, then the time is slightly less important.

Colin Walker says:

A new comment from Matt and a post from Doug Belshaw within 13 minutes of each other made me think again about sleep and the work/life balance. Matt mentioned his sleep routine (done properly) and Doug quoted a piece from The Washington Post that mentioned how Robert Owens proposed that a workers day should be equally divided:

"Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest"

We are intimately familiar with the idea of getting 8 hours sleep (even if we don't manage it) and the concept of the regular work day (epitomised by the 9-5) is firmly established. We do not, however, necessarily subscribe to the notion of 8 hours recreation. Owens campaigned for workers to labour no more than 8 hours a day yet just as important was the idea that "they had time to pursue their own interests — to enjoy leisure activities, cultivate their own projects, spend time with their families and so forth." But times and expectations have changed along with how and where we work. As a rule people used to be employed where they lived, whole towns grew around mines and factories. Commuting was not something the average worker did. Now we live in commuter belts because we are priced out of the cities, spending hours every day travelling to and from concentrations of employment because that's where the work and the money is. The mines and factories are largely gone while technology has changed the very nature of the work we do. It promises freedom but can actually entrap us. That same technology means that we are always available, always connected, able to work from anywhere. Globalisation has turned this into a 24/7 world where schedules are aligned and we must be "on call" just in case we are needed. Even at weekends. The long work day Owens sought to eradicate seeks a return, implicitly via concessions and expectations even if not contractually. For all our progress we risk going backwards and the work/life balance leans heavily in favour of the former. If the working day becomes inflated it must steal time from our recreation or rest - usually both. The commute becomes either an extension of the work day, "a way to get more work done" as Doug puts it, or we try to reclaim it with books and phones and tablets. Neither is truly productive. So we make choices, often bad ones, as we try to maximise what we have.

# Austin Kleon linked to a story about a Spanish man struggling to exist in the modern world after spending much of his childhood living with wolves.

What really strikes me about the story is the language used, how the cave he had inhabited is called "his natural home" and his discovery referred to as being ripped from that home, "captured" - so visceral and emotive.

# Remember:

"It's not about being perfect, just about being."

Reminder to self written in my notebook.

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Nitin Khanna says:

A large portion of the Internet is just about discovering interesting things. A part of that is just generally interesting things. But the other part is things that interest us. These two are different. For most of my lifetime on the Internet, I’ve sought, and found, interesting things. My media diet has varied a lot over the years, flicking from one service and form of information to another. I’ve frequented twitter, Facebook, reddit, news sites, Instagram, blogspot, imgur, tumblr, self hosted blogs, forums, and a whole lot of the Internet I’d rather not talk about. I’ve seen memes (I hate memes), I’ve been caustic (I’ve learnt that’s just not useful to anyone), I’ve read entire books on Gutenberg. But of late, I’ve noticed that I’ve finally found my space. Some people find it on tumblr or twitter because that’s where the people are. I’ve found it on RSS. I follow, unfollow, cull, clean, unsubscribe and resubscribe to blogs a lot. Whenever I think about moving away from my current self-hosted RSS feed solution, I look at the 700 odd blogs I follow and think that I’ve got better things to do than to reduce this list to an acceptable-by-the-service-I-want-to-move-to number. I used to follow well over twelve hundred sites, but I realized that I don’t follow the news the way I used to (now I seek it out myself, when I want to, via Reuters or Apple News), so I unsubscribed every single news-site RSS feed and this is where I am today. For a short, shining time, I was a part of the App.net story. I wasn’t particularly involved, but I did pay for the API and I did learn a few things along the way. I also made some friends and found more people to follow (overwhelmingly, these are old white guys. Just the demographic frequenting that service, I guess). When ADN went away, I still followed these people’s stories, through other social networks that sprung up (pnut, 10C, micro.blog) but also partly, through their blogs. On these social networks, I found more people to follow their blogs of. What prompted me to write all of the above? I saw the following post by Colin Walker on his ridiculously well-built blog today –

“It’s not about being perfect, just about being.”

He’d written it in his notebook at some point and took the time to remind readers like me of it. This idea resounds with me. This is something I’ve struggled a lot with. I’ve tried daily blogging, daily journaling, daily private blogging, scribbling notes on a throwaway page on the net, all in an effort to just put words on the screen, to just ‘be’. It doesn’t matter that those words are perfect. Or, well, it shouldn’t. I still fret over it. I still write something, save the draft, and push it out of my memory, because I worry that it’s not up to the mark. I still feel that a lot of my writing is either too laborious, or too much of a rant, or that I drone on. Meanwhile, there are people like Colin out there, reassuring us that no one is perfect, that there is nothing more important than putting those words, and oneself, out there. I’m glad I follow his blog, and so, follow him. I’ve found my space in this one field of interest – writing. There are others I’d like to sate, but I believe I can find blogs for those too. If not, I’ll write about that too, right here, asking for your help, dear reader. Photo by Blue Trail Photography

Colin Walker says:

Liked: Finding my space – Nitin Khanna...

"I’ve tried daily blogging, daily journaling, daily private blogging, scribbling notes on a throwaway page on the net, all in an effort to just put words on the screen, to just ‘be’. It doesn’t matter that those words are perfect. Or, well, it shouldn’t. I still fret over it."

Nitin's struggles with perfection echo mine. No matter how much I try to just 'be' there is always a nagging doubt, a little voice saying "that's not good enough." I try to ignore it but it doesn't always work. I have to remind myself from time to time and it was one such reminder that prompted his post. We are told "you can only do your best" but we don't always have to, we sometimes just have to do. We can come back to it, improve, iterate if needed.

04/05/2018

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