Sleep - How Dreaming Too Much Kills Your Dreams

Man, don't we all love that feeling of getting into a nice clean bed and knowing that we have hours upon hours to "rest our eyes" and re-energize for the next day. Don't we also equally HATE when that alarm clock goes off in the morning when we have to wake up.  I somewhat experienced that this morning after a night of binge watching Game of Thrones with my girlfriend (mostly the screen watched her as she passed out after the 1st episode, but I'm almost to the end of Season 3 and just saw the The Red Wedding - Unbelievable!) when my alarm clock went off, and I instantly reasoned with myself that I didn't have enough sleep. It was 5am and I went to bed around 11pm the night before.  I usually try to get 6.5 hours each night, so I reset my alarm clock for 6am and then did the usual lay down to see if I could go back to sleep. Usually, if I don't get right back to sleep within 5 minutes, I get up because I'm generally telling myself I don't still really need more sleep as opposed to feeling like I do. I closed my eyes for what I felt was 5 minutes when EH EH EH EH! My Iphone went off.  I got up to write this morning's blog feeling a little guilty because I probably should've set my alarm for 5:30 instead because the extra 30 minutes were not needed.  The reason I felt so guilty about this is because I am a person that truly feels like sleep can be a huge enemy to one's success.  Even though I only slept for 30 minutes longer than I usually do, my mind instantly went to all the different things I could've accomplished in those 30 minutes. This led me to think about all the people who consistently indulge in sleep (my mind goes back me when I was 12 and would sleep until noon on the weekends) and how people don't realize that they are doing such a disservice to themselves in terms of achieving their life goals.  There are several main reasons this is true:

YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO WANT TO SLEEP MORE
Many people don't consider themselves morning people, and while I must say I have been lucky to not have this issue as of yet, the reason I think many people have a tough time in the morning is because they have a largely positive affinity for the feeling of sleep. Sleep can be like a drug if we're not careful because of the positive feeling it gives us when we're doing it.  And like any drug, the decision to indulge in it and allow it control our lives often makes it tougher to overcome with time. This generally leads to a life of mediocrity or no success. Oftentimes, regardless of how much we may have slept, we wake up a little groggy and tired and then we convince ourselves that we need just a "little" more sleep to feel 100%. The problem with this is that we are comparing what we desire to feel at that time (100 alertness and fervor for the day) with how we are currently feeling having just come out of REM (grogginess and a haze). The fallacy with this comparison is that we are very rarely going to naturally wake up WITHOUT that feeling of grogginess when we are so used to sleeping based on what our bodies are telling us. Therefore, to use that as a barometer is like using the feeling of excitement and joy of going to the gym. This excitement for the gym feeling can be developed over time, however, but it doesn't happen naturally. This often happens after one sees the results of their commitment to go to they gym no matter how they feel. You can do the same with sleep by picking a designated amount of sleep you are going to get and then sticking to that regardless of how you feel when you wake up that morning.  Once you start to see the positive results you will experience by waking up earlier and getting more accomplished, you will be excited to start your day to do more. According to WebMD, the average person needs between 6-9 hours of sleep. For each person, however, you have to decide what is the optimal amount for you. I figured this out by decreasing my sleep time tremendously and analyzing my results on those days. Over time, I settled on 6.5 as the optimal amount to feel energized and ready to dominate the day. You have to experiment with yourself a little to figure out what your body actually NEEDS versus what it WANTS because it is different for everyone. While this reason is very important, the next reason should hit home even more when you think about achieving great things in life.

IF YOU'RE NOT GAINING, YOU'RE LOSING
Life is primarily about trade-offs.  You can't spend more time doing one thing without sacrificing that time to do something else. While sleep is necessary physiologically to recharge your natural functions each day, overindulgence only deteriorates your ability to incrementally improve yourself each day.  We only have so much time in a day (86,400 seconds to be exact), and how we choose to spend each second of that will be a direct reflection on where we stand in life. When you decide to sleep longer than you should and just "chill" in bed, you are putting yourself at a great disadvantage to those you are competing against who are using that time to improve their abilities in some manner.  As with anything, if you are not consciously working to improve your ability or plight in life with each second you have, then you are generally making it worse.  By identifying your optimal amount of sleep and sticking to it, you are ensuring yourself that you are not "wasting" any time lying in bed while you could be applying yourself in a number of different ways to continually move the ball in a positive direction.  The opportunity cost of oversleeping is huge when you consider the next reason you have to limit the amount of sleep you get.

TIME IS THE ONLY INVESTMENT YOU CANT GET BACK
As have others, I've lost a decent amount of money on the stock market. Trying to invest in the next "hot" thing has proven detrimental to my net worth, so I've learned to stay the path of incremental gains to ensure the security of my wealth. I still may take a risk here and there when there is a large opportunity for gain with a small, calculated risk. When these investments don't initially work out, however, I generally don't freak out because I know that there is time to recover and make up for what I lost.  When it comes to the investment of time, however, there is absolutely no way to recover the time you may have lost. And until Doc Brown invents that time-traveling Delorean for Marty McFly, this will always be the case. For that reason, it is ultimately imperative that we spend our time appropriately by doing the things that will continually move us forward versus sleeping.  Some of the most famous people in history understood this fact and applied it to their lives by limiting the amount of sleep they had to make sure they were able to get more done and achieve more during their lifetimes. Often, you don't have to be smarter than others, you just need to be willing to work harder and more to achieve more - something that anyone can do if they commit themselves to it.

Sleep.  We all love it. There is nothing better than laying your head down on a Billy D. Williams-like cool pillow and drifting off into Lala land. And while we all may enjoy the dreams of grandiose adventures and success that we may experience while sleeping, if we spend less time do this and more time working, we just might be able to make those dreams come true in real life.

Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and MBA graduate of Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN.

This is a personal blog post. Statements, views and opinions expressed via LinkedIn and other platforms do not necessarily represent the perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes of TEKsystems. TEKsystems specifically disclaims any responsibility or liability for any losses or damages of any kind suffered by a user resulting from postings or links on social media platforms, including, but not limited to, losses or damages resulting from fraud, misstatements and misunderstandings. TEKsystems does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of the information contained or linked.

Why Semi-Annual Reviews are a Must!

So, I was planning to take only one month off for my birthday before getting back into the swing of blogging.  Due to the amount of fun I was having for that one month (shout out to Aruba for an amazing time!), I decided to do a little more travel than I originally plan and extended the furlough to two months just to re-energize and wipe some items off the bucket list that I had been putting on hold for the past three years.  With that being said, this turned out to be very fortuitous because, while I didn't do any blogging during those two months, I did do a lot of reflection. It allowed me to just take stock of how the first half of my year went and then put a plan in place to improve the areas that I may have slipped in so far.  This also afforded me the opportunity to congratulate myself on the areas that I held steady in and was successful. Now, I'm back, more dedicated than ever, and excited about a lot of the ideas I was able to generate during that mid-year review. Therefore, I wanted to take a second with my first blog of the the 2nd half of the year to encourage everyone to start doing a mid-year review each year to help increase the chances of hitting their goals for the year. There are several clear reasons this is beneficial:

I.Why wait until the end of the year?
As we all know, procrastination is the cause of so many individual's failures in life.  For that reason, I have never been a big fan of waiting until the end of the year to take stock in one's performance with any endeavor.  For many of us, we may have completely forgotten some of the ideas that we committed to on January 1st, and if we don't take a minute to remind ourselves, these things will be completely lost in the day to day hustle of life. By doing a mid-year review, you give yourself the opportunity to do a quick "gut-check" on how faithful you have been to the ideas you focused on earlier in the year.  If you've done a good job, now would be a great time to celebrate this commitment and pat yourself on the back.  Small victories and congratulations to ourselves are those little things that can typically keep us motivated when times may get hard.  If you haven't done a good job and notice several things that you may have slipped on, now would be a great time to rededicate yourself to the task at hand.

II. It gives you the opportunity to check your progress and adjust accordingly

Often, when we are excited about all the amazing things we are going to do at the beginning of the year, we sometimes over-commit ourselves to various endeavors that may not be realistic in light of different circumstances in our lives.  Life is very unpredictable and your situation at January 1 may be drastically different from your current situation. Therefore, the act of semi-annual evaluation of your yearly goals make sense because you may need to adjust them accordingly to make sure they are Attainable and Relevant (two of the important aspects of SMART goals) to your current situations. If they are not A and R, instead of continuing to shoot for something that may not make the most sense for your current situation, why not adjust accordingly to still give yourself a sense of accomplishment for the end of the year?  When Tiger Woods has a bad first round (which he seems to have a lot of lately), he knows that it is unrealistic (or at least a stretch) for him to win the tournament, so he adjusts and creates smaller goals for himself, i.e. making the cut, shooting under par, or having a bogey-free round.  By doing this, you give yourself something to shoot for that will keep you motivated. On the flip side, if you have completely dominated your goals for the year so far, it may give you a chance to adjust them to be greater than what you originally expected. You may have only thought you were capable of achieving employee of the quarter at the beginning of the year but, after winning it two quarters in a row, you now realize you have a shot at employee of the year if you keep up your activity. Why not go for it, by adjusting your behaviors and commitment to reach that goal.

III. Iterative analysis is the tool of the successful

Many people don't take the to time to truly analyze if what they are doing is helping or hurting them in the long run. Often, when they commit to an idea and create several approaches to solve the problem, they go forward full steam ahead, not taking a minute to evaluate if what they are doing is actually working.  By performing a mid-year review, you are putting yourself in the minority - the minority of people who take time to evaluate the success of their ideas so far and take a different track if necessary. Sometimes, you don't need to change your ideas, as much as you need to implement different strategies and approaches to achieve your ideas.  By doing a mid-year review, you give yourself the opportunity to make these adjustments accordingly to greatly increase your chances of success. To truly take it a step further, those who are successful often analyze more frequently than this, from monthly, to weekly, to even daily.  The faster you identify a mistake, the faster you have the chance to fix it and put yourself on the right side of success.

Mid-year reviews.  At work, some of us have been conditioned to hate mid-year reviews because we see them typically as a "here's what you've done wrong so far this year" session. However, if we take a little bit of a different view of this situation, we would understand they are really "here's how you can make your year better than it already is" dialogue.  By doing this ourselves on where we stand in life and not only work, we greatly increase our ability to be successful in all facets of our world, not just in the place in which we are paid...which is still very important, BTW. ;-)

Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and MBA graduate of Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN.

This is a personal blog post. Statements, views and opinions expressed via LinkedIn and other platforms do not necessarily represent the perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes of TEKsystems. TEKsystems specifically disclaims any responsibility or liability for any losses or damages of any kind suffered by a user resulting from postings or links on social media platforms, including, but not limited to, losses or damages resulting from fraud, misstatements and misunderstandings. TEKsystems does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of the information contained or linked.