My Crazy Sleep Experiment: Day Five–not insane yet
May 16, 2012 What's Going On
So far so good. Waiting for some kind of crash, but so far, nothing!
It can’t really be this easy, can it? I mean, if it were, everybody would be doing it!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Everyman Sleep Schedule, sleep
Day 2 of my crazy sleep experiment
May 13, 2012 What's Going On
Day two of my Everyman Sleep Schedule was totally messed up by something completely out of my control, so I think I might be back at square one. :-( And yes, I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes. It was a rough night.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Everyman Sleep Schedule, sleep, video
Day 1 of my crazy sleep experiment
May 11, 2012 What's Going On
Last month I wrote about the Uberman and Everyman sleep schedules. Well, here we go…
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Everyman Sleep Schedule, sleep, video
Can I get more time by sleeping less without going crazy?
Apr 24, 2012 What's Going On
Last week I was reading an article on Cracked.com titled 5 Ways to Hack Your Brain into Awesomeness (that’s about as close as I can get to self-help without barfing). The very first tip was about something called Uberman’s Sleep Schedule, detailed here and here. You may recognize the basic concept from an episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer tried something similar. It seemed to work for a while, but then he fell asleep during sex and slept so hard that his girlfriend thought she’d killed him and had him thrown into a river.
And while I definitely don’t want that to happen to me, I can’t stop thinking about the concept. How many times have you said, “I wish there were more hours in the day!”? I said it just yesterday! At this moment I have a lot of balls in the air: I have literally 11 blog posts half-finished that I started in the past week. I have to pack for a big trip. Our house is being appraised in a few weeks and still needs a lot of work, most of which will be done by me. My daughter’s birthday party is coming up and needs a lot of planning and coordination. And the kids’ school’s biggest fundraiser is also very soon and I need to learn an entirely new system for handling the money, via some online seminars that I don’t really have time for this week. And that’s on top of all of the normal every-day stuff that also has to get done.
Well, it sounds like I could get all of that done and more, if I were willing to try a crazy experiment.
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Tags: sleep
How to power nap correctly
Jan 27, 2012 What's Going On
Years ago I read something that totally changed the way I napped. Sometimes, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, I would lay down for a nap, and wake up groggy a couple of hours later. Or, I’d set an alarm for 15 minutes, supposedly the right amount of time for a power nap, and then be jolted awake and feel sleepy for an hour afterwards.
But once I learned about the “caffeine nap” I found that I could lay down for about twenty minutes and wake up totally refreshed. I’ve become a regular caffeine napper, often grabbing one before the kids get home from school.
I saw this tweet today and thought it would be a good time to explain how and why to take a caffeine nap:
So, this is for Cecily and everyone else who, like me, could really use a pick-me-up in the afternoon and isn’t ready to try cocaine.
How to take a Caffeine Nap
Step 1: Drink some caffeine. I’m guessing for most of you that’s coffee (or maybe a Red Bull for Cecily?). For me it’s a Diet Dr Pepper.
Step 2: Set an alarm for 20-25 minutes from now.
Step 3: Sleep.
Here’s what should happen: caffeine takes about 15-20 minutes to start taking effect, so the goal is to have it wake you up before the alarm goes off. You’ll be waking up in stage two (out of four) in the sleep cycle, when you’re not in a really deep sleep yet. That, combined with the caffeine, should keep you from feeling groggy.
Researchers at a British sleep center found that out of all the things you can do when tired and driving, a caffeine nap was the most effective in waking you up. Keep that in mind on your next road trip when your eyelids start to droop.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Today’s Agenda: Dr. Oz edition
Oct 26, 2011 Posted From My Phone, Today's Agenda
So I’m on my way to Rockefeller Center to attend a roundtable discussion with some fabulous bloggers and Oz the Great and Terrible. No, wait, wrong Oz. I’ll be meeting Dr. Oz, the one who rose to fame on Oprah and keeps making me look up the word “omentum.” (Many thanks to Barbara Jones and the One2One Network for this opportunity!)
I’m very excited. Dr. Oz is Turkish, as is my husband (which, incidentally, is why half of the gmail spam I get is in Turkish; if I were paying attention I’d probably know how to say “penis enlargement” in Turkish by now).
The Ass begged me not to try out the one Turkish phrase he taught me years ago. He says I’m pronouncing it all wrong and Dr. Oz won’t know what the hell I’m talking about. But I don’t think he understands how much I enjoy making a fool out of myself.
That, coffee with a couple of PR friends to talk about the upcoming start of round two of the Hidden Valley Moms Panel, and a PTA meeting will round out my day. Did I mention I’m doing all of this on 3.5 hours of sleep? Not cool. If I can work in a nap somewhere I will, but I don’t see how that will be possible.
I spent about ten minutes this morning shortening a pair of jeans with Style Snaps, one of those “As Seen On TV” products. They’re these little adhesive snaps that are supposed to let you snap your pant legs shorter for wearing with flats. I wanted to wear my favorite jeans (a gorgeous dark pair that Not Your Daughter’s Jeans gave me) with comfy shoes because today will be a long day. I got them onto my pants no problem, and I think they look good. But the real tests will be if they show at all when unsnapped, and if they stay on in the washing machine.
Have a great day!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: As Seen On TV, Dr. Oz, sleep
Today’s Agenda: Full night’s sleep edition
Sep 15, 2011 Today's Agenda
So on Sunday I declared on twitter that I was going to get to bed by midnight every night for a week, and see what it’s like not to walk around like a zombie. That night I got to bed at 2am. The next night I think I did a little better, around 1:30am. Then another 2am. Last night, finally, I climbed into bed at 11:15pm & slept like a rock until my alarm went off at seven. Of course, I’m still exhausted. But I’m going to try to keep this up until I’m not.
I’m feeling very energized today, though. I don’t have anywhere to be, and after having a productive day yesterday I don’t feel quite so much like I’m drowning in deadlines. What I do need to do, though, is spend about two hours going through emails. Plus, I went to an electronics show last night and have several new products to tell you about!
I signed Fiona up for after-school classes this morning. We went over the brochure together and she picked which classes she wanted to take. She loves these classes, and I love them more because they’re right at her school – it extends my work day by about two hours, for way less money than a sitter would charge.
But I’m sitting here right now thinking about her homework. She’s in second grade now, and it’s been taking her a couple of hours to complete her homework. That will get faster as she gets more used to the routine of it, but still, I’ve now shortened her evenings by two hours. Plus, she has to tag along whenever I take Jake to Tae Kwon Do. I think I see a lot of car-based homework in her future. Not sure how that’s going to work out.
OK, time to be productive! (I hope.)
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Today’s Agenda: System-wide failure edition
Sep 14, 2011 Today's Agenda
Well, the good news is I got some extra sleep this morning. The bad news is all four of us overslept.
I went to bed at two and honestly can’t remember if I made a conscious decision not to set my alarm for seven, figuring somebody else would wake me up at some point, or if I just forgot. I went to bed in a sleepy haze, fully clothed.
My husband, who usually gets back into bed for a few minutes after showering, fell back asleep. Which never happens.
Jake says his alarm went off at seven, but he must have fallen back asleep.
Fiona just slept. She relies on one of us to wake her up.
Amazingly, the kids were only a few minutes late for school. Not quite sure how that happened.
The rest of the day has been a blur of craptacularosity. Four technologically savvy women with new-ish computers and fast home WiFi networks couldn’t get even decent quality on a group Skype call. That subscription may have been the worst money I’ve ever spent. We had to end up having our meeting on the phone, on a conference call. It felt like we had fallen back a decade technology-wise.
I’m trying to finish a post I’ve been working on for weeks. I did way too much research on it and can’t seem to distill it down to anything that makes sense. If it was for my own site I would just abandon it, but it’s for someone else and I just can’t seem to make it work. Since two of the last three posts I sent them didn’t really work I think I’m totally psyching myself out on this one.
And I accidentally found a weeks-old email informing me that I’d won something cool. I never saw the email when it first came in, and I’ve completely missed the deadline for claiming it. Fantastic.
The good news is that Avocados from Mexico is messengering over some avocados today. I’m a huge avocado fan, so this is better than being sent jewelry (and worth almost as much).
The day can only go up from here, right?
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1 (avocados). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
