TIM: I think that having a way for you to go to sleep consistently every night at the, hopefully, same-ish time and getting up at the same-ish time each day, even the weekends– it’s hard. I struggle with this immensely. But finding ways to do this is extremely important. And what’s helped me become much, much better about this than freshman year, at least, is putting it into my calendar.
So step 1, get Google Calendar if you don’t already. But step 2, just putting a regular time. For me, that’s usually midnight. But whatever it is, that’s when you’re going to sleep and just doing your best to hold yourself to it.
There are certainly many nights where I’m like, I see what’s in my calendar, but I up you one p-set. And in those cases, yeah, can’t really fight yourself. But doing your best with that, figuring out maybe a way to incentivize yourself, that’s kind of what I’m doing. So that can help a lot.
And I think it’s extremely important because, as I said, sleep– my body and just my mind, the way that I interact with the world is fundamentally different when I’m operating on 4 versus 8 hours of sleep. So when I’m operating on 4 hours of sleep, I just feel like the world blows me every which way. I have so much less control. I’m much more just like a camera walking on tripods, just observing, spectating the world.
And when you have 8 hours of sleep, it gives you that extra alertness, that extra push to make you feel more like I’m in control, I can organize, I can be efficient. And I think it’s absolutely critical. And so for me, I just feel so much better.