I Changed My Alarm Clock

For years now I’ve let sleep rule my life. I would sleep 10-11 hours a night. Sometimes even take naps! I’ve recently started to put my foot down and began capping my sleep time to 8 hours a night. I wanted to regain those extra 2 or 3 hours and use them for something productive. I live by alarm clocks. I had several on my phone to remind me to do things. I had a 6am alarm to wake up the girls for school. I’d then go back to bed until the 7:15am alarm went off to tell the girls to get ready for the bus. I would then go back to bed until the 8:30 alarm would go off for work, and I would probably hit snooze a couple times. A week ago I shut off my 8:30am alarm and stayed up from 6am on. I would either read or write so that I could make productive use of my time. However, I still needed a reminder to go to work so I set an alarm for 8:55am so that I would get on my computer and be at work on time. By shutting off my 8:30am alarm I was committing to staying up. If I left it I would inevitably use it. So when I adjusted it to 8:55am it was like setting a stake in the sand. I was claiming my sleep schedule even if it kills me. What was funny was when my wife saw me before she went to work she said, “You got up really late today?” I said, “What do you mean I’ve been up since 6am.” She then explained that she heard my alarm go off at 8:55am. I told her that was the new me, it was my alarm to remind me to go to work. I know that hearing about my sleep schedule isn’t very exciting, but there really is a lesson to be learned from it. If you want to make a change you have to put that stake in the sand somewhere and make the change.