My purpose is to stomp procrastination

I excel at one thing over all other talents: procrastination. If I got a nickel for every moment that I procrastinate, I would build a tower to the moon with my nickels...if I ever got around to it. Perfectionism hounds me at every turn. No matter what I am doing, there is always something else looking more fun, rewarding, or necessary. I have often received compliments on my work in the past, but rather than encourage me to continue practicing my talent, I have felt oppressed by the need to work harder until my life is completely drained of fun. That's the roadmap to Stressville.

Do I want to live my life in Stressville? Do I want to build a family there? Do I want to retire there? Of course not!

My heart breaks a little each time I want to take action and hold myself back, each time I want to speak up with the truth and stay silent. Heart ache is all procrastination will ever bring. Sometimes, procrastination can be disguised as a more noble cause such as sacrifice, fairness, and humility. Those can be useful qualities to possess, but in excess, they become oppression, injustice, and shame. Essentially, each time I procrastinate, I am voluntarily giving up a piece of my soul.

What can I do to counteract the negative force of procrastination? Increase my self discipline. If I concentrate on improving my self control, I will build resistance to the demoralizing effect of procrastination. I can build up one area of my life at a time: finance, wellness, intellectual pursuits, spiritual growth. The list goes on and on. Each area improved brings new strength to those areas I've already worked on. If I practice self discipline, eventually time will give me what I need and want from life.

Procrastination comes from impatiently demanding that time pay all the fruits of labor in advance and continually failing to contribute. Procrastinators are time moochers. My goal is to contribute my fair share for what I have already received and go even farther to exceed my own expectations of myself.  My purpose in life is to find the way around unjustified hesitation and take action towards being happy.

For the last time - NO PIE!

I'm finally getting through to people that I don't like to eat the random sweet desserts at work.  Today there was a lot of pie left over from a big meeting.  Word made it into my hallway, but I did not even flinch (well I winced a little just because I'm so sick of the overabundance of empty calories).  Someone came into my office to tell me and stopped himself because he remembered that I can't/won't/don't eat that stuff.  Alas! I have discovered a benefit to dieting: no matter what diet you're on, if it's weird enough, people will stop trying to offer you anything.  If the diet is based only on calorie restriction, no one understands when you pass up dessert since it's not something offered every day.  But if you're one of those people with a taboo, everyone will be more afraid of offending you than trying to peer pressure you into eating junk food.

I once had a friend who loved saying, "Free food tastes better and is better for you."  I used to agree with him because I was in my senior year of high school at the time so I had many starving college years to ponder this phrase.  It's an alright mentality for someone who is scraping by and doesn't know if or when their next meal is coming.  I have outgrown this phase now.  I could continue to spend all my money on games, music, and electronics like I used to (fashion was never first pick on my spree list).  I could survive on rice and frozen pizza until my student loans are paid off.  That is how I survived paying down credit cards.  Instead, I chose to enlighten myself with the experiment of finding the best fit for my health.  I've discovered that being healthy is a lot more fun and relaxing than eating junk and always having indigestion or low energy.  Time will pass, bills will get paid, things will be bought, and good health can be gained along the way if I can find a way to make it enjoyable while keeping it affordable.  For me, dieting is far more about the self discipline gained in the process than about actual body image.  The feeling of true health is the reward.

Has your groundhog seen a shadow?

I would say that this Groundhog day, I saw my financial shadow looming over me.  I have been following a plan of break-neck speed to pay off my student loans.  It finally occurred to me that if I hold back some of that cash for personal projects I can benefit greatly from learning and accomplishing new things instead of just waiting out the debt.  By personal projects I mean gardening, building renewable energy systems, and reinvesting in what I have rather than just buying random things like music and movie tickets to pass the time.  I believe that to successfully utilize reinvestment, I have to be professional about how I spend my time and effort.  I am not throwing my time into useless hobbies, but instead investing in health and sustainability practices and sharing the knowledge I gain along the way with others.  Sure I'm delaying my student loan payoff by 14 months, but that's only costing me an extra $300 in interest versus my previous payoff date.  That's less than a dollar a day for a better quality of life!

To aid in my quest for personal growth, I am going to be following Steve Pavlina's guide to creating a business plan.  I could also use a refresher on self-discipline by rereading his series about that.  Following the Primal Blueprint has given me a head start in motivation for homesteading and a thorough work out in self-discipline.  Now that I have given myself permission to reinvest in my life, the only challenge is to decide to spend my time on meaningful action instead of brooding about how much work it's going to be.

Identify the shadows in your life and shed some light on solving problems you have been putting off.  You can't hide from them forever.

Food Snob

Not only does following a diet plan require the ability to stand out from the crowd, it also requires the pride to rise above the crowd.  That is how peer pressure is defeated.  Now that I eat so differently from my peers at work, I find that I don't enjoy the free food that is offered any more.  The truth is, I haven't been enjoying it for some time, it just took a while for my actions to catch up to my beliefs.  Yesterday, I passed up free fresh pizza for a chicken salad.  I even refused the delicious smelling mini apple pies.  Usually when food is provided for me at work, I leave my homemade lunch for the next day.  However, I was really looking forward to eating my salad, and last week's pizza temptation showed me that pizza is really not worth the taste.  I was rewarded last night when I had a smooth jog around the neighborhood and rewarded again this morning when I woke with plenty of energy.

By snob, I mean that I'm not afraid to turn down free gifts of food.  I don't discourage other people at work from eating pizza and cookies.  I don't have to.  My enjoyment caused from eating healthy food speaks for itself.  If you are trying something different in your life, just remember: people who ridicule you are only jealous that they either don't have the willpower to change or that they didn't think of it first!  You can encourage them by showing that true enjoyment is worth a little extra work.

Self Made Existence

This morning I enjoyed French toast made from bread that I baked myself.  I made that bread when I was experimenting with polyphasic sleep which gave me the time to bake it.  Essentially, I gave up sleep so that I could enjoy delicious homemade French toast.

Next year, I plan to grow a garden.  Gardening takes a commitment of time that I previously have not expended.  What activity will I have to give up to accommodate that change?  I could give up sleep, but really there's not much point since my work schedule requires me to burn daylight.  I'm not going to garden at night because it's hard to see.  I could give up television.  That is something I've given up for periods of time in the past.  It is completely possible to do it again.  I could also take a good look at everything I do and every distraction and question whether it is important enough to keep me from investing time in homegrown food.

Opportunity cost is a part of every decision.  If I focus on what is truly important to me (growing wholesome food while keeping a day job), then I can start to tune in to opportunities to encourage that goal.  The goal is a statement: I will do this.  Focus is the belief that the goal is important.  In order to focus on my goal, I have to keep two realities in my mind: the reality that results from my completion of the goal, and the reality that results from my failure to do what is necessary to complete my goal. By comparing these two realities, I can make decisions with clarity instead of doubt.  I can overcome fatigue and boredom to reach the success that is waiting on the other side of perseverance.

I can.  I will.  I want to.  That is all it takes to lead a life that I choose instead of the life I am handed.

Polyphasic Sleep Conclusions

Polyphasic sleep is not for the weak willed. I've been trying the Everyman 4 sleep schedule where I take 4 naps roughly every 4 hours and then have core sleep that is longer than individual naps in the early morning. I have succeeded in failing. I could not get a handle on the midnight to 4AM stretch of time. I can get up at 5AM just fine, but when my body wants sleep, there's no reasoning with my brain that 4AM is not too early.

I was really on a roll after the first day. The novelty of being awake at times when I am usually asleep was all the motivation I needed to stay awake those extra hours. But my plan to slowly migrate toward the Uberman sleep schedule was flawed. I am able to motivate myself to do something that I know is difficult, but when I'm asleep, I am in an entirely different context than reality. What I decide is urgent in reality had no impact on the motivations of my dreaming mind. When I am woken from a pleasant or urgent dream, my only goal becomes to stay asleep so I can continue to chase my dream quest.  Reality loses all importance.

Here are some other problems I encountered. My household consists of my spouse, cat, dog, and me. Everyone was accustomed to being in a certain place at certain times. The cat hates the dog. I had to let the dog stay out of his crate longer at night because my late night cooking and cleaning woke him up and made him noisy. When he was allowed to roam the house, he used his freedom to sleep peacefully on the couch. Even with him being practically comatose, the cat refuses to occupy the same room and protests by using inappropriate places for a litter box. This in turn made my husband cranky. Dealing with this much chaos while undergoing sleep deprivation is not fun. Granted, those problems can be solved with patience, something I had in abundance.  However, with so much time spent at work and so much  at home time spent with everyone else being asleep, I can see the dissonance between my perspective of reality and others' perception of my chronic napping.  I can see that it may seem like I was abandoning trouble at every turn without a care since I had more time to for leisure.  The polyphasic adaptation would be a lot easier without the stress of daily obligations.

Another issue I had was a problem with dehydration. My hands can get do dry in winter that they crack and bleed. One of my remedies is wearing moisture gloves at night after caking my dry patches with Neosporin. I found it hard to do that since I never stayed down very long. I had to drink lots of water to stay awake which resulted in more trips to the bathroom, hence more washing my hands. My eyes were always extremely dry, too. I see this as more of a problem with my diet than the sleep schedule. However, cutting back on delta stage sleep does seem to increase dehydration. I believe that's part of why we sleep so long at night - it's a daily hibernation to cut down on resource demands.

I do not regret trying polyphasic sleep. I gained a massive amount of insight from this trial about myself and about existence. I also found time to jump start some other habits which I intend to keep, even if it requires that I miss out on a little sleep to keep up with them. I find that a few minutes of Pilates in the morning, a long walk in the early evening, and yoga just before bedtime is very rewarding. I found it easier to eat healthier since high sugar foods and caffeine would make me crash before my scheduled nap time.  Really the past week of polyphasic sleep was like a boot camp that pushed me to extremes so that I had to consciously make every choice instead of just following a routine.

I do not consider the experiment of polyphasic sleep to be over. I am not going to try to sleep deprive myself in the near future. I can already see reasons that my current course of action will not get me to the goal of a 22 hour day. I will try this again in the future after I work on developing my self discipline into a less flabby state.