Mind Pilot – Take Self Control

onday

Missed three alarm clocks — seeing a pattern here?, but still up bright and early
9:30

(To the sound of clapping hands in the back of my head).  This might seem normal for most people, or even half an hour late, but I get to the office bang on 930 — the earliest I’ve got here for a very long time.
10:15

I am realising just how difficult that is.  Looking through my notes over the last few days, I might have enjoyed almost a week now, stable mood, but I’ve overslept three times in a row.  Hitting the alarm clock and going straight back to bed is one thing, but I have no recollection or even hearing alarm clocks this morning.  I had the same problem on Saturday morning.  How can alarm clocks make so much noise, but not get heard?

Somehow, I managed to awake naturally at 8:40, and decided I’d give myself five minutes together, rather than trying to go back to sleep again, and accepting defeat.  I might have set a target to get to the office for nine, but 9:30 would still be perfectly respectable.  I try to take him a little bit of what Tony Robbins had to say about diet.  I don’t think it’s so easy to cut out everything he says, should be got rid of — after all, that includes all meat and dairy products, not to mention a few other things, which should be used to replace these daily staples!  Taking his advice of eating lots of fruit, and starting the day with nothing other than fruit, seems to be a lot easier, so our glass of orange juice first thing, and have already gone through a a punnet each of raspberries and black berries.  I know that Subway will be calling, but even their so-called veggie delight contains two of the big no-no’s — cheese and bread.  I don’t know if it really can be remotely realistic to eat such a restricted diet, but I’m sure there can be some big benefits and making a few small changes.  I just have so much more research to do to get a full understanding of what really is the best food to eat, especially as there’s so much conflicting information out there.  One thing I do know is that getting food intake right isn’t just about maintaining a good physical shape, eating properly really should help me feel a great deal better in the mornings, and this is so key for the rest of the day.

 
4:24

It looks like any fears about getting up without are fully solid night’s sleep or unfounded.  Yes, I was getting a bit tired.  By mid-morning, but I soon perked up after a sandwich and a caffeinated soft drink.  I’ve managed to breeze through around 4000 words of content, so I’m just shy of my 5000 word target, it should be able to complete this and still be on the way by about 5:30.  This really will be an exemplary day, and exactly what I’m trying to achieve every work day from now on.  How difficult will this be to keep up?

4:30

All this might seem like a big fuss about nothing, but I have bought myself down with so many irrelevant details before, and got so worked up about little trifles, that it is better to continue noting down which small changes help, and which do not, however insignificant they might seem.  The whole day can stand or fall on the slightest distraction, so it is important to keep everything as focused as possible.  About 10 minutes ago, the computer crashed, in a way which I’ve only seen it do once before.  I didn’t get it a chance to note down the full nature of the error, but I run a few diagnostics, and I think seems to be wrong.  I hope it doesn’t occur again soon, although I have been having some problems with this voice recognition software, and it could start to get irritating, and this is the linchpin of my attempts to stay on track.

My trip to the market was pretty successful, I managed to pick up loads of fruit and veg, and my mind myself, that in these times of high inflation, there is such good value out there in that market, if I can just get into a good enough routine to go there more regularly.

9:20pm – on the train home

I’m already an hour into the train journey back, and spent most of it.  Half asleep.  Now it’s time for a little bit of a notebook session.  As with a trip down here, I might not produce that much, but it’s all about quality rather than quantity.  Continuing on from where I left off earlier, I contemplate the advantages of making a fresh start at 9 a.m. each morning, and think about how I can get over the huge mental block that have about actually succeeding in this really quite basic task.

Why do it?  Should be pretty self-explanatory.
Just how much of a boost will this give?  A very massive one
can it be quantified?  Thousands of pounds.
Why so much?  Just look at the possibilities it creates.
So how much I want to ‘ spend ‘ on this?  It’s all about money, it’s about caring enough to get into a decent routine.
Is it all down to Monday — get this right, and the rest take care of itself?  Pretty much — gain start writing some of the most important.
What else?  Not to get too lax towards the end of the week — Thursday morning, and any overlap between Thursday night and Friday morning meets, particular attention.
Why is it so difficult?  Have I done it before?  When I laid it previously, was exactly 9?  How about the start of 2005?
Wasn’t that the intent gave up at seven stop out onto that last few weeks?
So is there any excuse?  Yes — loads — see below:

Excuses for not being in the office for 9 a.m.

• Didn’t have time to prepare the night before
  didn’t hear alarm clocks
  Berks/irritations in bed
  clothes not ready
  don’t have breakfast ready.
  Don’t have the motivation to get to and from work
  I can make it to the office, will be so tired through the day
  I had everything laid out, but it then took me three hours to get to sleep
  I’ve already had too much caffeine today to go to sleep properly.
  I haven’t had enough exercise today.
  No motivation to get up in the morning
  TV to watch tonight
  it’s just too hot to sleep properly
  I still do a lot of chores to do before going to sleep
  there’s too much noise out there (especially windows open.)
  I’m still feeling overwhelmed by this medication

Countering this

• Just get straight up and take a shower
  music at the ready
  visualise — how good will it feel at the end of the day, with 5000 words.  Having been reached, money in the bank, feeling a tidiness.
  Juice
  to produce
  fruit
  positive attitude can carry me through

Approximately 3 p.m.

After last nights, mammoth session, which included over 5000 words and content, divided between some useful commercial content and a major update of Mind Pilot, I didn’t arrive home until 5 a.m., and it was about seven by the time I managed to finally get to sleep.  Therefore, although it is way off the routine I’m trying to get onto, in this context, getting up at 3 p.m. was perfectly reasonable.

4 p.m.

Was anything particularly zero the office before five, or would I be better off trying to get a long overdue bike ride in?

7 p.m.

I chose a bike ride option, and had an excellent three-hour ride, even if I would normally expect to cover a lot more distance than I did.  Possibly, this didn’t matter, after several weeks of being out of it, I was, quite literally, back in the saddle.

2:30 am

I could, and should have got up much much earlier today.  I was always starting to feel awake, just after midnight, having spent almost all of the previous day in bed.  But I just felt he washed out.  Tui comes around, still washed out.  Then it starts to get light, but I don’t think I’ve got the energy to sustain anything more than a bit of reading. 

At last, at six, I decide to get up and have a bit of breakfast.

7 a.m.

Breakfast should energise, but I’m still feeling dopey.  So it is back to bed.  An hour or two a proper solid sleep might have done some good, compared with a half sleep that I had been getting over the last few days, but instead I doze likely before finally starting to sleep a little bit more solidly.  Perhaps around midday.  By about 3 p.m., I’m finally starting to pluck up the energy to get up, and take a shower, but this hardly invigorates me.

4 p.m.

If there’s one thing that I think will help me get kickstarted out of its malaise, then it is the right medication in the morning.  Ritalin worked so well, until the eruptions of late last year, so it isn’t rocket science to contemplate the benefits of having it back.  It just requires one phone call to the right specialist, but his lines are always busy.  Try three more times.  Still busy.  Maybe it would help if I tried making these calls much earlier in the day, but right now, this is easier said than done.  Ritalin provides the very jumpstart, which I need to get me going in the morning, and without this, mornings become afternoons oh so very quickly.

(Thursday 24th July) 1:46 a.m.

At last, I found the motivation to come into the office, and have produced some decent content, having spent a few hours doing the research necessary to manage it.  Now trying to work out whether to go straight to sleep or not.  If is on any kind normal routine, this should be obvious — going to bed at 2 a.m. would already be late, but I have spent the best part of the last two solid days in bed, so I’ve already had more than enough sleep of late.  If I did try and get to bed now, there is a slim chance of go straight to sleep, and be offered a good time tomorrow morning, but it still far more likely that the restless, and that I won’t go to sleep several hours — even if I’m starting to feel pretty tired now.

Perhaps the best thing is to carry on making a few more notes for now — nothing technical owner has, just continued Mind Pilot updates which I haven’t been doing for a few weeks, and then maybe try and hit the sack in another hour or so.

2:02

Posting raw waffle as a blog post – hopefully putting some kind of order into these thoughts. Can always expand on this later. At least there’s something going up there. Now I’ve made it into the office, the day has been quite productive. Just need to get that Ritalin – fast. Really want to make that fresh start next week.

Overall: **—-