Sleeping well

Another update from the realm of work-life balance: Things have improved greatly. The key, interestingly enough, seems to be getting up early. Those who know me will need a few moments to cease laughing, but it’s what I’ve actually been doing. Well, okay, I’ve been getting up at 7:30 – which by my standards is so close to yesterday it’s amazing I wake up at all.

Next step: Don’t dawdle. Quick breakfast, shave and go. Do NOT turn on the computer, under no circumstances at all. This has me at work at about 8:30, way before everyone else. I can switch on the lab and perform some experiments of my own. Since I don’t run full measurements alone, I normally only have some more simple element characterization to do, or some behaviour to check. When other people start arriving, I either piggyback on their plan (if it sounds interesting) or go to my desk to perform calculations and read.

By the time lunch rolls by, I’m actually hungry and I have accomplished something. In the late afternoon (17-18 o’clock) I’m actually finished with a decent workday behind me and can go home. The main realization behind this is that there are two things that have been tiring me:

1. working late in the evening (not the same thing as working long hours)
2. sleeping too little

The last one was simply because I went to bed too late and had pretty long breakfasts (including some reading and music). After a week without either, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. I think that for the forseeable future, I should be able to do everything that needs doing – although “needs doing” is very often my own decision.

On another note, my two official hobbies, choir and french, are both proceeding well. The choir may actually get Elias into decent shape before christmas, and while my french is even rustier than I thought, I’m slowly thawing it out again. The key seems to be some discipline in formulation: Stick to grammar I actually know instead of shooting for loftier phrasings. That’s what I normally like to do, but if it leads to four errors per sentence, it ruins the appearance.