{"id":11140,"date":"2019-07-15T11:03:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T11:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?p=11140"},"modified":"2019-09-11T06:10:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T06:10:18","slug":"0768-nightmares-as-a-bottleneck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0768-nightmares-as-a-bottleneck\/","title":{"rendered":"0768 \u2013 nightmares as a bottleneck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I’ve been trying to become more effective and efficient as a person. This isn’t always my top priority at any given point in time, maybe because it’s not a very natural way of thinking for me. In fact I have some aversions to it, which might be worth examining in a separate post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, when I do find myself in the right headspace for thinking about it, I tend to find that the #1 bottleneck in my life is sleep. When I’ve been sleeping well, I am clear-headed, make better decisions and so on. When I’ve been sleeping poorly, I am sloppier, think less clearly, make worse decisions. So. If I want a good life \u2013 and I’d like to think that I do, whatever that means specifically \u2013 I should sleep better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what is the general quality of my sleep, and why isn’t it great to begin with? There are some legacy issues here. I consistently have a habit of staying up really late, and sleeping late as a consequence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve experimented with a range of hypotheses to explain this. One particularly sticky one right now is that I like to stay up late because a lot of my favorite people tend to come online around 4am Singapore time. But… I could hypothetically hang out with them simply by going to bed early and waking up early, and talking to them at 6am. So why not do that instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, to wake up at 6am, I would have to go to bed at something like 10pm. Why am I not doing that? I often don’t feel sleepy at 10pm, I find myself saying. Why? Because… I wake up late to begin with. It seems like an endless cycle and I’m not sure that I can go back to the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing I do know is that I used to stay up late all the time as a teenager. Why did I do that? Well, back when I used to live with my parents, in their house, late nights seemed like the only time that I could have to myself. When everyone else was asleep, and the world was quiet, and the internet seemed faster. I wonder if I romanticize that somewhat. I used to have to go to school early in the morning, and going to bed even earlier (say, 8pm?) seemed like a socially strange thing to do, considering mealtimes and whatnot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, that limitation no longer applies. I am now free to go to bed at whatever time I please, and wake up whatever time I please. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I left my job at the end of June 2018. At the time, I was typically sleeping around 1-2am, and waking up I think around 10am-ish. I would often go to work at about 11 or 12. Even then, I wasn’t very happy with how my sleeping habits were. I would love the days when I woke up early and got to office early, but most of the time I was reaching work at around lunchtime. (Being just slightly ahead of lunchtime felt a little wasteful, since I wouldn’t be able to get substantial chunks of work done knowing that lunch was 30 minutes away. I really enjoyed lunchtime with my colleagues. I always felt bad if I was late and missed the window when everyone else was eating and talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why didn’t I “fix my sleep” (is this the wrong sort of language to be using?) when I still at work? Well… I tell myself that I felt tired and overwhelmed all the time. There was a lot of work to do and I never felt like I was “on top” of it. Looking back now, I realize that it’s not really possible to ever truly feel “on top” of everything. But I don’t know if that was something I could’ve appreciated at the time. I might have had to leave in order to develop a broader, bigger perspective on things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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