I usually don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions, to be honest. A new year is just another day that we’ve decided is important because some people a long time ago decided how they wanted to mark the passing of time, after all. Still, after finding this blog, I was inspired.
My first goal is to create some sort of morning ritual. I’m actually more productive when I wake up early, though the activation energy to getting out of bed is pretty high. I’m still kinda fuzzy about the details, but, most importantly, I want to be able to get out of bed on command.
There are several reasons why this is difficult for me: I don’t have a set bedtime, I often stay up late for a variety of reasons, and my room is always cold. Even if I go to bed early, I still end up waking up after 10 am on days when I don’t have an early class. Even if I set my heater to come on before I wake up – even if I left my heater on all the time – my room would still be cold.
These are some of the micro goals I’d like to set:
- going to bed early: From the research I’ve done on my sleep habits, I think I need 9 hours of sleep a night. This is a ridiculous amount of sleep, but it’s what my body thinks I need. The only way I’m going to accomplish this is if I go to bed ridiculously early. I’m going to aim for closing the laptop at 11 pm and going to sleep by 12 am.
- creating a bedtime routine: I want to use the time between 11-12 to prep for bed. I’m not sure if I should include showering in this time, because it takes me a ridiculously long amount of time to shower, and showering tends to keep me awake, but I don’t want to move my shower to the mornings either. I think this time should include things like brushing teeth, reading/doing sudoku, and maybe some writing.
- waking up when my alarm goes off: I need something to get me out of bed in the mornings that’s compelling enough that I’ll do it even when it’s cold and miserable. Preferably, I’d like to train myself to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button on the alarm. The best idea I’ve had thus far is to do some sort of abs workout while I’m in bed that will wake me up.
- creating a morning exercise routine: This isn’t necessary to make me into a more responsible adult, but in the past months, I haven’t been doing any upper body exercise. I’ve been doing tons of biking and a fair amount of tkd, but this has only been working out my legs. In addition, due to dojang renovations and the holidays, there’s no tkd between Christmas and my departure for Boston. This has led to me eating more (and unhealthier) and cut out about 7 hours of exercising a week (about 3.5 hours of tkd + 30 km of biking of varying intensity). Anyway, I’d like to have some basic, 10-15 min. workout in the mornings to wake me up and keep my body fitness more well-rounded. Right now, I’m thinking crunches, push-ups, plank, stretches, kick stretches, and maybe some light kicking.
The thing is, the method outlined in the blog calls for incremental change over the course of two months, but I honestly can’t see pulling this out in that many steps. Sure, it’d be nice if I could ease into a new schedule, but there are days when I actually need to wake up early, much earlier than even my schedule requires.
As a compromise, I’ll break it down into the sections I’ve outlined, once a week, after I get back from Boston. Right now, my sleep cycle is set such that I wake up without fail after 10 am (except for early class days), and whatever plans I might make will be ruined by the Boston trip anyway. I plan on using the interruption brought about by jet lag to make it easier to ease into my new schedule.
