For the past week I’ve been doing some life hacking and experimenting with a major schedule shift.
Long story short, because our son Jason has been sleeping very poorly, I decided to try changing up my schedule. Recently he’s been up every hour after midnight, just needing a little comfort to get him back to sleep. Of course his minor wake-up results in his mom or me having to get out of bed to help him out. That doesn’t make for a very restful night.
Fighting is futile, so I’m rolling with the punches. I changed my schedule so I’m getting up for the day at 1am-2am. Instead of traipsing around in a state of stupor, I’m getting work done in the eerie silence of the wee hours of the morning.
The family is up for the day around 6am, lunchtime for me. I spend a few hours, get them out of the house, and it’s back to work until mid-day.
Is it working?
There have been some intended and unintended side-effects to this plan.
First, it is working. When the kids wake up, I’m in there like a shot. My wife sleeps through it, and she can tune out knowing that I’m on the case. She’s happy, I’m happy.
I’m super productive in the quiet morning hours, with no interruptions from telephoe, email, and IMs. Even twitter is super quiet. Many affiliate marketers who keep strange hours, or pull 24-hour coding sessions, already know the magic of these as working hours.
I get the afternoon and its daylight to take some time for myself and run errands or do some fun stuff. On Wednesday, instead of taking a nap for a few hours, I shot over to Mt. Wachusett for a few hours of guilt-free skiing. I even participated in the GeekDads@Home podcast from the summit.
Otherwise, I’ll work a very long day, or catch a nap.
We’re starting to work with a development team in India. This brings me much closer to their timezone. Though they don’t know it yet. The cat’s out of the bag. (Yes guys, I am up. Skype away.)
My local co-workers are dealing with this just fine. I’m so connected even when I’m out of the office that they probably haven’t even noticed much difference. We’ve already got flexible working hours, and focus on the morning as “core” hours where we all try to be around. This syncs up with that just fine.
So far the downside is that I’m now pretty well off schedule with people on the West Coast. This makes for some late meetings.
And I’m feeling a little jet-lagged. It’s like I’ve just moved to England.
When do you Sleep?
Luckily, I’m the type of person who doesn’t need that much sleep. 5 hours is enough. So if I can make sure I’m in bed by 9:00, I’m pretty safe. Yes, my evenings are cut short, but that’s a small price to pay as they’re usually spent snoozing in front of the television anyway.
I’ve taken a few afternoon naps. They’re incredibly recharging. Siestas are way underrated!
The weekends may get a bit rough as I sync up with the rest of the world and the evening activities. I hope I can manage that.
