How to Become an Early Riser

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes:  we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ”
Charles Caleb Colton

A few years ago – I decided to experiment with how much sleep I actually needed. For most of my adult life – I had worked on the assumption that it was 8 hours as this is what was commonly told to us (along with the fact that you need to drink 2 litres of water everyday). For me – I could actually sleep 7 hours and still feel OK the next day.

Over summer, I slept too much (enjoying the fact that my kids are all old enough to have developed their own sleep patterns). I was concious of this because I read the book Brain Rules earlier this year that spent an entire chapter looking at the subject of sleep and came to the conclusion that we can suffer from too little sleep but on the flip side, we can also suffer from too much sleep.

The other day a came across a link from Tim Ferries to an article on sleep: How to Become an Early Riser by Steve Pavlina. Steve had some interesting things to say – because I am one of those folks that went to bed at various times and would programme the alarm clock (only on workdays) for around 8 hours later, and then fight with the snooze buttong when it went off. I kind of had a routine.

I liked Steve’s idea of getting up at the same time, everyday but varying the time you go to sleep (it sits better with my natural way of sleeping). So for the last week, I have set the alarm for 7.00am (which is around an hour earlier than I would normally get up). I go to bed between 11 and 12 and will read (again, as per Steve’s suggestion), and when I get to the place where I can’t read the more than a page of two, I put the book down and fall asleep within 5 minutes.

The first few nights of following his test caused some strange sleep patterns for me and I started waking in the night (something that I don’t normally do). After those nights though – I was fine, and now I naturally wake up at 7 – even on the weekends and feel OK. If I get tired, then I try and take a nap in the afternoon (which is not always possible), but is another idea that I got from the Brain Rules book. This has been working well for me.

I fall asleep at various times, have read more and have gained, I would estimate another 6-8 hours of time this week. This time has allowed me to exercise more, read more and pray more – so on the whole, I feel a lot healthier and peaceful as a result of this.

I still have to determine to get up when the alarm goes off rather than wrestle with the snooze button (Steve has some good hints on how to do this), but the habit of getting up is starting to form, and I now started to naturally wake up between 5 and 15 minutes before the alarm goes off.

So, all in all – it has been a successful experiment for me and can highly recommend giving it a go. Read Steve’s article, and then follow the link at the bottom for part 2.

The Goal book review

I got a copy of this book in Waterstones. It was one of those books that you randomly pick up in the business section and the description of the book intrigued me. It was a management book written as a novel – and it also had great endorsements so I purchased it. An impulse buy to be sure but one that I have not regretted.

The Goal is 20 years old and introduces a concept called Theory of Constraints (TOC). The story is about Alex Rogo, a plant manager given 3 months to turn his plant around or it closes. He meets his “business coach” (a physics professor) accidentally and the story unfolds the interactions between the two as well as Alex and his team (and wife).

The professor challenges all of Alex’s assumptions and asks him to think about things differently.

The back of the book promises a “fast paced thriller style”. This is not how I would describe it but I was captivated and wanted to finish the book. It was written well and for me, it was a good style.

The first riddle to solve: the goal. What is the goal of any organisation? The answer: make money. Anything and everything a company does then should help them achieve this goal. The story is about how he takes his failing company and makes money. As I said, it is a great read that I recommend. Also, if you like this book – the sequel – It’s Not Luck is also a good read and deals more with TOC for sales and marketing.

Both books together caused me to buy some other books on TOC to get a better understanding on the whole thing. All of it is money well spent. Today – we received their CD Rom for kids to help them describe conflict and find solutions.

Speed reading in 20 mins

Photo: MorBCN

Well today I finally sat down and figured out the speed reading posts, made some notes and gave it a go.

I first figured out the speed at which I read normally and I was quite please that it was 340 words per minute as this was beyond the avergae 300 wpm. It’s always good to know that you are above average!

A picture of my notes are attached but more detailed instructions are on the Tim Ferriss blog

For me, after about 20 mins I was Reading around 600 wpm (which was my goal amount). I was quite pleased with the results.

I did it slightly different though as I halfed my reading time, I read each chapter twice. First time through it was pure speed Reading at around 6-700 wpm.

I would then re-read the chapter at a slightly slower rate of 600 wpm. This meant that I undrstood more and retained more information. I also made notes on the second reading of the chapter.

The only “down side” to this was after about an hours reading my eyes started to go a little funny. So I stopped reading and had a small walk. It took about 5 mins for my eyes to feel “normal”

Be interesting to see if this happens again.

It was a great way to read a book (I chose 59 Seconds as I like the authors previos book Quirkology and the writting was nicely spaced rather than small and tight type in Nudge, which is the other book that I am reading).

Will keep practicing and see if a habit forms here.

The Tesco Committment

I am sat here watching TV and enjoying a beer. I have just witnessed a Tesco TV commercial where they told me that they were “committed to helping me spend less“. The question is: do I believe them and is there any evidence to support that claim? Because if you make a claim like his you had better make sure that it is true.

My gut feeling, though, is that it is a false statement (and I therefore get a little annoyed at the claim). Business exists to make a profit and I don’t believe you do that by committing to your customers to spend less. You have loss leaders, product placements, promotions and sale items all designed to get me to spend my money. That’s the evidence that I see in store. That’s the reason for all the TV adverts, and that is the reason that the Tesco share price keeps rising.

I know that they are committed to getting me to shop in their shop rather than Asda or Sainsburys.

Some might argue that it is true statement, and that every little helps. I don’t know the inner workings of Tesco - all I know is how I personally respond when I hear such a statement and it is not the response that Tesco marketeers have paid for. Maybe I am alone in this, but I doubt it. There is too much grey here.

So, when you make a statement about your company or product, make sure that it is believable and overwhelmingly believable.

I think it would be better to say “committed to giving you a better deal than the Sainsburys” or “all-round, a better shopping experience” or “committed to helping you spend more, but in a way that will help you feel better about yourself!”. Or, which I think would be better: “committed to destroying the competition”. That would be honest, funny and cool all at the same time.

I would love it if you could post your suggestions of what Tesco could be committed to.

I’m gonna learn to speak spanish

I have never been great with languages – but I do have a real desire to learn to speak another language. So I have chosen to learn two new languages – Spanish (and then followed by German). German is an obvious language to learn as I work with Germany on a regular basis – but I chose to learn Spanish first for no obvious reason whatsoever!

So, over the next 6 months, my goal is to learn Spanish to a point that I can converse easily in the language. I’d like to say fluent – but I have, at this point, no idea what that means. So I just want to be able to have / hold/ understand a conversation with a native Spanish speaker.

I’ll keep you up-to-date on my progress, and what I’ve learned and so on, so if you want to learn Spanish – hopefully you can learn from my experiences.

Here goes…

How to present facts and figures

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

Often, when doing a presentation – you have to present facts and figures, so how do you do that in an interesting way?

Have a look at this video for some inspiration.