GTD: Biphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 3

… and here we go again!

Physical State/Tiredness

The day started brilliantly – I really felt like I was “starting to find my stride”. I awoke fresh, alert and not tired at all. I took the usual power nap at 1230-1300 to freshen up (looks like this will be here to stay) and all was well and rocking.

Sadly, it kind of broke down when I decided to meet some friends for lunch and then stay out. I ended up pushing my afternoon nap back by a couple of hours. Once I awoke from the nap, I did feel overly tired. However, a cuppa and a sandwich appears to have righted that.

Mental State

Even better than yesterday, I can honestly say I cannot remember the last time I woke up feeling as good as I did this morning. The positive effect of the increased alertness and brain being “in gear” is just amplified by the fact that I am really getting stuff done (will cover in a bit). The reduced guilt of not crossing tasks off the list added to the feel good factor of not being a zombie really does make a happy geek!

Diet

Still suffering a little bit with the caffeine withdrawal, but I think the worst is definitely over. The smaller and lighter meals/snacks are really sitting better on the stomach too (I made sure today I had a smaller main meal and a slightly more substantial late-night snack).

Productivity

Following on from my thoughts yesterday about how to measure productivity, this is what I have so far:

Tomatoes Completed

Total number of Pomodori/Iterations from The Pomodoro Technique completed.

11 – and still counting (will update before sleep) 13 in Total. However, I did take a massive break today (i.e. from 1300-1930) meeting friends for lunch and a catch-up. It was actually nice to just walk away from the list knowing I had actually done pretty much everything I wanted to get done today.

ToDo List Zero

Are all items that were on the “ToDo” list at the start of the day/added and urgent completed?

Yes! :) I also completed some additional items that I had marked for tomorrow.

Inbox Zero

All emails in the Inbox processed. (i.e. relevant tasks created/replies sent)

Yes. All that remains is two emails that have a reply pending, but they are not urgent. I have created tasks for tomorrow to review the draft content before sending.

Review

I literally have no loose ends hanging around. I am reading a massive amount more, and what is best, is it seems to be being absorbed a lot quicker. My brain feels like it is on speed but just isn’t getting tired. It may sound like I am over-hyping it, but I am really NOT. I guess today I felt it a lot more since the overall tiredness is a lot less. I generally seem to be processing information faster. I have even spent some time today reading/watching talks on Wetware Refactoring and it all makes sense. In short, it is well known that the more you use the brain, the better it gets. It is a learning, adaptable machine. Just using it for an extra ~3 hours a day is bound to have a positive impact on it’s processing ability.

Exercise

Still pending, although I did really get the stomp on when walking back home from the city centre (totalling a good 30 min walk). Like, seriously, I physically couldn’t walk any faster (would have to break into a run). I didn’t get tired at all.

Summary

I was worried that the hiccup caused by the late afternoon nap would really blow it, it is still early days and I expect to still be fragile. However, all seems well thus far.

I am genuinely starting to enjoy this experiment a lot more (now the tiredness is wearing off). I cannot wait until next week when ALL of my backlog of crappy items (will outline FYI) will be gone, FOREVER! I can then start on increasing my output of the cool stuff that I want to get done (both geeky and non-geeky).

Crappy Backlog

These are tasks that have been mounting over the past few months.. Some sound silly, all easily done.

  • 8 months backlog of blog posts tagged for later reading (this is now down to about 3 months – in three days).
  • A tonne of washing that had just stacked up. This is now down to about 4 more loads, but everything is DONE – i.e everything washed is ironed and put away (I would never be up to date with ironing).
  • Sorting of books for reading, and actually reading them. I completed “The Art of Unit Testing” in a few days and I am now about 10% through “Agile in an Imperfect World”. This is of course all on top of the reading taking place in the RSS feeds.
  • General cleanup/review of GTD process to better tie in with how I operate. Something was amiss or I wouldn’t have been in this mess right? :)

Comments

  1. Unknown22 July 2009 at 16:56

    Sounds like the experiment is going great. It's interesting to follow and see how it's working out for you. I'd hop on the bandwagon and give it a shot, but I think it would mess up my synch with the wife and kids too much. At least for now. Maybe when the kids are older and don't have to be put down in the early evening. :)

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