Most acronyms make me cringe a little, but from the first time I heard it, I loved the 12-step acronym used to help keep adherents, well, adhering: H.A.L.T.
Hungry. Angry. Lonely. Tired. As in, when you’re struck by an urge to use (or drink, or use, or what-have-you that you shouldn’t), STOP (or, you know, HALT!) and see if maybe you aren’t one of those four things.1 I am not sure if the next step in the protocol is to do what one can to edge one’s way out of whatever state one is in, or to call one’s sponsor, or both. Or neither. The main thing one is supposed to do is a not-doing; however you accomplish that I’m guessing is fine and dandy, provided you’re not breaking any laws or hearts in the process.
I’m not in the Program, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fall into some bad, bad habits when my level of awareness dips, or my basic needs are left unmet. Food was and is the easiest fix; between the abundance of good-for-you snacks readily available when I’m being good and the abundance of horrible-but-delicious fast foods available when I’m not, it’s almost impossible to get hungry anymore. Anger is less of an issue than an effect when hungry or tired kicks in; loneliness is even less of an issue, as it’s almost impossible for me to get enough time alone anymore, and rare that I feel lonely when I do.
Tiredness is my thing. Tiredness is probably every workaholic’s thing, because there is always, always, always more one can be doing, and almost never anyone to order you to sleep. Not that you’d obey, anyway.
This past trip to Austin got me thinking deeply about the need for rest. When else do you dream of water but when you’re in the desert? Even with the Nei Kung to bolster me (I was worlds better off this year, all things being equal, thanks to Nei Kung), I could feel myself slipping further and further into the Dark Place as I got more and more tired. Or rather, I was keenly aware of the additional effort it took to keep myself up, to stay buoyant and lively, to prevent my brain from racing to the judge-y, lowest-common-denominator, knee-jerk awfulness it will when I am tired.
For a while, I even toyed with the idea of changing Goal #1 for the year, to get back on SCD 100%, to “Get 8 hours of sleep per night.” When I am deeply rested, not only am I at my gracious, nimble-thinking best: I actually like doing all the other good-for-you stuff like eating well, exercising and giving traffic nimrods the benefit of the doubt. (Believe me, in L.A., where 3/4ths of the population drives like crap and the other 1/4 is loaded for bear, it’s a highly salubrious act.)
Then it occurred to me that I can fold that goal rather neatly into the SCD goal, thereby gaining two bangs for my buck. In addition to helping me create a strong foundation for resisting tempting treats like, oh, everything, increasing my nightly sleep load from six hours to seven hours to eight hours is a much cleaner metric than “avoid bread more often” or “try not to hit the drive-thru window for 99¢ tacos at Jack in the Box.”
More on this as I sort it out, but for this week, my goal is “lights out by 11pm.” For now, anyway. If you’ve successfully adjusted your own sleeping/waking hours to include more of the former, I would love to hear how you did it, and what the payoff has been.
Oh, and for the record, this entry was set to post automatically just after midnight, a full hour after Me-of-the-Future (who will be known as Me-of-the-Past by the time you read this) went to sleep…
xxx
c
1Or some combination, I suppose. These four things, they mix and match very well.)
UPDATE: Just read a great piece by publisher Michael Hyatt about the sources of work creep (as it cuts into sleep/rest time).
Image by corrieb via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
You are so right about this, and so was Gretchen Rubin. The main thing is to recognize that you really will be able to do it — whatever it is — so much better tomorrow after a good sleep, and to do that every night. Lights out by 11 is a great rule, if you normally sleep till 7 and are a morning worker. Even better if you break it knowing that you can sleep in the next morning.
Yes. Law of diminishing returns. With rare exceptions, tomorrow is really a better day.
And I mostly do let myself sleep in now if I break the rule. These past two weeks with crazy travel hours (and hard outs) have been the exception.
A couple of years ago, I started started moving the start of my day earlier. I get up at 4:30am now. There turned out to be about a dozen parts to this — setting up coffee the night before, having more than one alarm going off that required me to physically get out of the bed to shut off, and so forth. But bedtime was far and away the most important determinant, and the hour or two before bedtime turned out to be the real key. I really need to be physically in bed, reading and doing nothing else, an hour before I turn the lights out, or else I’m still too wound up to fall asleep. “Checking e-mail,” “watching a movie,” “writing in my journal,” or anything else: doesn’t work.
The parts! The parts! It’s true, isn’t it? There are always micro-components to change. For me, so far, it’s getting off the (very bright) computer at least a half-hour before. Comfort TV is good, but it’s really DVDs, not TV, which is very disruptive.
With you on ComfortTV. My last task of the day is washing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and preparing espresso for the next morning. While I do this, I stream previous night’s The Daily Show on the web. It’s a perfect match — 20 minutes of show for a 20 minute task, and I laugh so hard that sometimes I have to sit down and recover. It erases any tension from the day, and I get into bed chuckling to myself. An alternative: episodes of 30 Rock on Hulu. No commercials, so it’s a 20 min happy pill, divorced from all critical thinking. An unanticipated side effect: I sleep better, have less anxiety-related dreams, and remember my dreams better when I wake up.
One of the best things I ever did for myself was to stop using an alarm clock. Horrible invention. I take one when I travel, but at home? Nuh uh.
Irritable drivers dominate our midwest roads, too. I think it’s a syndrome. I think everyone needs a nap.
I’m with you on the alarm clock. It’s for emergencies only. (Or beating myself up, but that’s another story.)
Wow. It’s like you were reading my mind. I was talking to a friend yesterday about how the past week had been full of craptastic eating, and how the fact that I was averaging 5 hours of sleep a night probably didn’t help matters…especially when this princess operates well only by getting at least 8-9 hours nightly (which I almost never get).
Because of my ridiculously early wake-up time (4am… if I didn’t like my job so much, I’d get something with normal work hours), it’s hard to get to bed on time. But I made my own pact: in bed by 8pm. If I can make it happen, I think my co-workers might throw me a party, since they won’t have to deal with cranky ol’ me.
I appreciate the H.A.L.T. acronym — stop, think… and back away from the ice cream…
4am?! That must be some job, Laura.
If you can get to bed by 8pm, I can do it by 11pm.
And yeah, HALT works great for ice cream.
A couple of years ago, during a great job with tons of stress, I started treating my sleep time as a little more holy. My mind always seemed to be racing around what I had done or not done. So I tried to get back to my joy of sleeping (I really do love it) by being a little more joyous in the process.
As I lay down, and my head just touched the pillow and began to sink in, I would remind myself that “this is the most wonderful moment in my day”. It really was a wonderful moment when all the gentle hands that made my pillow and my sheets and my duvet and my mattress welcomed me into my nest. It was also a split second that slipped by too quickly if I didn’t savour it. It’s also one of my favourite adult-to-kid moments when my only job is to be happy and imagine something wonderful until I drift off.
Ya gotta calm to make it work but, when it works, it’s just the best!
I LOVE that gratefulness bit. Just finished Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madsen (that’s a shill link, btw, b/c I am SHILLING that fine sucka, and in full tomorrow), and she talks about becoming aware of the many, many hands involved in making our lives possible. Which makes it almost impossible to be a cranky-butt about stuff, and is also so wonderfully reassuring.
Great reminder.
Being a middle aged parent has been great instruction for me and my wife. We have actually allowed ourselves to get more than 8 hours of sleep! Going to bed as a pack – Mom, Dad, Toddler and Dog – especially in winter, has become a soul nourishing ritual. Kids need a lot of sleep, so do older parents it turns out. As my wife nears menopause its not uncommon for her to need a solid 10 every once in a while.
Efficiency is over-rated. Turn the multi-tasker off and find a pack to cuddle up with.
So you guys are The Waltons, is what you’re saying?
My pack is down to me and my trusty teddy bear, but she’s always good for timely shuteye. And in lieu of a pack, maybe I can make a pact with a virtual pack. Hmm…
Sooo wise and soo true. I have moved bedtime to 10 by turning computer and tv off my 9:30 (doc told me the light of each tells your brain to wake up), turning on white noise machine (ocean waves), then cd of relaxing massage-type music (japanese flute, etc), turning on bedside light and reading or writing NOTHING HEAVY. Magazines, fun novels, journaling, etc.
Of course forcing myself to get up early in the AM is important too. No sleeping in on weekends unless I am behind or sick.
Such a great thing to do for yourself. AND, supposedly it improves your metabolism! Yay!
Wow. You’re taking this SERIOUSLY. Good for you.
Another thing I’m realizing really helps is hot shower at night. I like the feeling of washing off the day, and the heat is relaxing. And I’ve gotten better about keeping light reading material by the bed.
Great post. I talk about H.A.L.T. a lot in therapy and it really is a great concept to consider when you’re about to do something that’s not good for you. The more I pay attention to my thoughts and feelings, the more likely I am to realize why I’m making the choices I am and, ultimately, I’m able to make better choices.
My daughter calls it “hangry.” Hunger makes her feel angry, hence hangry!
It takes me about 20 minutes to get ready for bed which sounds ridiculous but being all mellow about brushing my teeth, putting on pajamas, etc. lets me wind down. If I try to be a lot faster, it just stresses me out defeating the point of trying to get more sleep.
To go to bed earlier, I find that cutting off snacking earlier makes a huge difference. If I snack late, it gives me an energy boost and I tend to stay up later. Bonus: dropped & kept off about 5 pounds when I quit post-midnight snacks without changing much else.
Do need to recommit to computer off by 1 AM though. Sitting back down to check 1 or 2 things is doom.
Back in January, I decided that the one thing that would most substantially increase my happiness was getting more sleep. So I did.
One thing that I was kind of in denial about was when I actually had to go to bed. I leave the house at 7:30 am, which is not (very) negotiable, so working backwards from there, through how much time I (realistically, not in my fantasy land) need in the morning, plus my happy-place amount of sleep got me a realistic bedtime.
Then I figured out that to actually be going to sleep at that time, I needed to start getting ready for bed at least half an hour, and ideally 45 minutes before that time. Why did I never think of this before?
I also radically changed my evening schedule. I used to be booked six nights a week; now I keep two weeknights free almost every week and at least one weekend evening. I also told all of my friends that I needed to be done with social stuff by around 9 pm.
The sleep is so completely worth it, though. I am about 3000% sunnier and more optimistic when I sleep enough, and therefore about 1500% less likely to let monsters and angst sidetrack me on the way to doing my work, and I love that.
Speaking of which, it’s time for bed! Sweet dreams!
I feel like my solution must be too simple to be helpful but I know sometimes that is the most overlooked so I’ll offer it anyway -
I go to bed when I’m tired and wake up when I wake up. For me that is 8-9 hours a night. (Usually from 11pm to 8am.) It seems like that would work since you’re self-employed, no? I get the feeling that maybe you’re forcing yourself to get up early?
Not too simple—it’s really good, and the bottom line.
My two issues are these: first, that I’ll feel like I’m missing something (a holdover from my childhood, when all the fun adults hung out and had Witty Banter after I went to sleep); second, that moving my whole clock later from staying up late messes with me. I feel like I’m racing to catch up all day, plus my best hours when I’m doing it right really are 10 – 2, with a little more available in the later afternoon sometimes.
Although honestly, I’d have to pull a Havi and decaffeinate and de-sugar myself to really know!