Transitioning from owl to lark

I try so hard to maintain a routine. To get things done. Not to waste time; not to waste a life. Central to this is my to-do list (on paper, not digital) and my exercise-and-diet spreadsheet - for healthy spirit in healthy mind in healthy body. Just enough stress to keep me driven and motivated - not so much as to cause issues.

My biggest personal enemy is procrastination, which attacks me from the moment I wake up. There's this voice, with a sensible tone, that offers me myriad rational excuses why not to start this particular day with a set of pull-ups before entering the kitchen from the bedroom, or not doing 50 squats as the kettle boils for my coffee. 

That procrastination pushes my exercises and other duties further and further back in the day, until the moment I realise I cannot get it all done unless I stay up to midnight. And so, indeed, lights go out at 00:00. And being blessed with good sleep, I drop off immediately, waking at 8am, with a wee-break or two on the way (after which I also tend to drop off immediately). Eight hours of quality sleep.

So all good then?

Well, no - I'm wasting the dawn. We're approaching that time of year when the night shrinks down to eight hours, and the day extends to 16 hours. And I'm going to bed at midnight. That's literally the middle of the night. If sunrise is at 4am, sunset's at 8pm, the middle of the night is midnight. 

Now, if I were to go to bed at 8pm and have eight hours of sleep - I could wake at 4am. Just think - five whole hours before the office Zoom call (instead of one). And still three hours of daylight after the end of the working day.

This is the post I was meant to have written two days ago - I didn't have time. Well, actually, I did have the time, but I wasted it. Mainly on doom-scrolling Twitter. Realising this, I have determined to dial back Twitter time and force myself to go to bed earlier - first 23:30, then 23:00, then 22:30, then 22:15 (it gets harder) - while each day performing all my tasks and doing all my exercises. 

Now, it's the exercises that are the problem. Having 'gamified' my routine with my spreadsheet and my  'beat last year' slogan, I cannot go to sleep until the exercises are all done and I'm ahead of my scores for 2022. If I didn't procrastinate and waste time, I'd get them done during the day, and not allow all seven sets to pile up until well into the evening.

So - by blasting through my exercises earlier in the day, by not letting procrastination bedevil my activity, I shall be aiming to retire earlier, keeping bedtime no later than 10pm, with a 9pm goal - and the reward will be more daylight hours to spend communing with the midsummer Sun.

Go with the flow, relax and take it easy? I try to do that too! 

Consciously striking the balance between getting on with it/getting stuff done on the one hand and taking it easy on the other is crucial to a happy life. Letting yourself go too often or pushing yourself to extremes should both be avoided. 

By nature I'm an owl with a messy desk. That's something that needs to change. It's never too late to mend.

This time last year:
Hills... I gotta have hills

This time two years ago:
Flashback to a Dream - subconsciousness and memory

This time 12 years ago:
'Old school' = pre-war

This time 13 years ago:
Britain chooses a coalition government

This time 14 years ago:
Landing over Ursynów

This time 15 years ago:
On being assertive in Poland

Start late, finish late (more on the Speed of Life)

Genetically, we Homo sapiens are divided into larks and owls; some of us can wake up early and immediately throw themselves into action – get dressed in 30 seconds, gulp down a quick breakfast, go for a run or a walk and write the next chapter of their autobiography before starting the day’s work at 08:00 promptly. Not me. I try, but my attempts at larking end do not usually extend beyond 40 squats while waiting for the kettle to boil. I only really get into my stride after 09:30. And then haltingly.

There are now believed to be 351 individual genes that determine whether we are larks or owls. Those with the greatest number of 'lark' variants will flake out up to 25 minutes earlier than those without them. Indeed, the latter group is more productive after nightfall. The science suggests that if you're not a lark, there's little you can do to be productive in the morning.

I'm clearly an owl, though not an ultra-owl; my productivity is highest in the evenings; I’m holding the plank while listening to science podcasts, blogging or tweeting, my mind racing with thought. Right now, it's gone eight pm, and I'm switched on full. 

Bedtime is the limiting factor, however. Eight hours of quality sleep is sacred – though which eight hours, I’ve come to realise, is a question of season. Moving the clocks to and fro in autumn and spring is dangerous for the human organism, which, like all living beings, is governed by circadian rhythm. The sudden jolt in autumn when we lose an hour of afternoon daylight is critical – I have learnt to counteract the effects by the simple measure of ignoring it. At the last weekend of October, I go to bed an hour earlier and wake up an hour earlier, thus becoming a pseudo-lark for five months of the year. But the clock is a mere convention (czas jest umowny); my body knows that what is accepted as "22:00" between late October and late March is really 23:00, eleven hours after the solar zenith, not ten. What counts is the time between sunset and bedtime.

In practice, however, this is rather a two-hour shift; in high summer I tend to sleep from midnight to 08:00; as the evenings draw in, it’s 23:00 to 07:00. And then when the clocks go back, the target is 22:00 to 06:00. I say ‘target’, because as I wrote the other day, my evenings are a rush to complete the daily targets – work, exercise and creativity. So it’s possible to be in bed half an hour behind schedule –but not much more. 

Being an owl means I’m not chatty at breakfast meetings. These typically mean getting up an hour or two earlier than usual, skipping breakfast at home, making my way across town in crowded public transport on an empty stomach; arriving at my destination grumpy (głodny Polak to zły Polak – 'a hungry Pole is an irate Pole'). My first thought is food rather than small talk. And so I ignore others, piling the sandwiches on my plate, then slinking off to eat them, washed down with coffee, emitting a visible ‘do not disturb’ aura while doing so. After the event, however, full of fresh ideas, I’m far keener to share new insights and network with other participants. I’ll stay as long as it’s polite to do so, or unless – like today – a train awaits to whisk me off somewhere else.

This time six years ago:
Swans' way

This time seven years ago:
Sam Smith, Shepherd Neame and the Routemaster bus

This time nine years agor:
Rainy night in Jeziorki - no flood this time!

This time ten years ago:
Wide-angle under Pl. Wilsona

This time 11 years ago:
Ranking a better life

This time 12 years ago:
Questions about our biology and spirituality

This time 13 years ago:
Paysages de Varsovie

This time 14 years ago:
Spring walk, twilight time