How To Optimize Your Life For Success

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of experiments.

I’ve been experimenting with my diet, my workouts, my habits, my planning, my sleep, everything really.

My thinking is this…

You need to try out a lot of different things–and track your progress–in order to figure out what is best for you.

Sounds simple, but planning out what to do, actually doing the things you planned, and tracking the whole ordeal is not something that most people do.

For example…

We all know that sleep is very important.

Personally, I’ve always been a night owl.

Ever since I jumped fully into this whole remote working lifestyle, that trait has only grown more entrenched.

I will routinely go to sleep at 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, because I know that I can sleep until 11 am, 12 pm, 1 pm, etc.

When I wake up and go to sleep doesn’t really affect me because I work online.

As long as I get all of the work done that is needed for that particular day, it doesn’t really matter when it gets done.

Herein lies the problem.

The most productive hours of the day are in the morning.

This is true for nearly everyone, myself included.

Sure, I can bang out work at anytime of the day or night.

I’ve often burned the midnight oil in order to get large projects completed the next day.

But if I’m completely honest with you and with myself, I’m much more productive in the morning.

So, I need to start waking up earlier.

But here’s the issue…

How many times have you said you were going to wake up earlier and then hit the snooze button?

Too many times to count I bet.

Me too.

When I had a normal 9-5 job or 10-6 job in NYC, I would wait until the last possible moment that I could sleep before getting up, rushing around the house to get ready, running out the door, and barely making the train before it left the station.

Sure, I wanted to get up earlier, but for some reason I never could.

So, this year I’ve started to do things differently.

I started tracking my sleep. 

For the past 3 weeks or so I’ve been tracking my sleep.

I want to start waking up earlier, but before I can begin waking up earlier, I first need to find out what my current sleep patterns looked like.

So everyday I write down what time I wake up & what time I go to bed.

(It’s super simple and takes like 10 seconds.)

Here are the first 2 weeks of the new year laid out for you:

(FYI – Total sleep is calculated by subtracting the wake up time from the previous day’s sleep time.)

• 1/1/19 | Wake: 10:30 AM | Sleep: 2:00 AM | Total Sleep: 10 hours
• 1/2/19 | Wake: 9:30 AM | Sleep: 12:30 AM | Total Sleep: 7.5 hours
• 1/3/19 | Wake: 11:00 AM | Sleep: 3:30 AM | Total Sleep: 10.5 hours
• 1/4/19 | Wake: 10:00 AM | Sleep: 11:00 PM | Total Sleep: 7.5 hours
• 1/5/19| Wake: 10:00 AM | Sleep: 2:30 AM | Total Sleep: 11 hours
• 1/6/19 | Wake: 11:30 AM | Sleep: 3:30 AM | Total Sleep: 11 hours
• 1/7/19 | Wake: 10:30 AM | Sleep: 5:00 AM | Total Sleep: 7 hours
• 1/8/19 | Wake: 8:00 AM | Sleep: 3:00 AM | Napped: 11am – 2pm | Total Sleep : 6 hours
• 1/9/19 | Wake: 11:00 AM | Sleep: 2:00 AM | Total Sleep: 8 hours
• 1/10/19 | Wake: 10:00 AM | Sleep: 3:30 AM | Total Sleep: 8 hours
• 1/11/19 | Wake: 11:00 AM | Sleep: 2:00 AM | Total Sleep: 7.5 hours
• 1/12/19 | Wake: 8:15 AM | Sleep: 3:00 AM | Total Sleep: 6.25 hours
• 1/13/18 | Wake: 11:30 AM | Sleep: 2:30 AM | Total Sleep: 8.5 hours
• 1/14/18 | Wake: 11:00 AM | Sleep: 1:00 AM | Total Sleep: 10.5 hours

Then we add up all the total sleep time to get: 119.25 hours slept.

119.25 hours / 14 days = 8.5 average hours slept

After tracking my sleep for the past 2 weeks I averaged out to about 8.5 hours of sleep per night. This is funny because the last time I did this, I averaged 8.5 hours of sleep per night as well.

Personally, it seems like I function best when I get around 8.5 hours of sleep per night.

It’s important to remember that sleep is cumulative so, it’s good track it week by week.

Getting 6 hours of sleep one night is fine, if the next night I get 10 hours of sleep to balance it out.

Where people usually go wrong is when they consistently don’t get enough sleep. That’s when they start racking up things like sleep debt which eventually turns into sleep deprivation.

Which causes a whole bunch of issues.

The average person does best on 7 – 8 hours of sleep per night.

Some people, like my mother, are totally cool with 6 hours per night. Other people, like me, prefer to be closer to 9 hours per night.

You gotta find out what works best for you and what your body prefers.

Then, once you know that, you can actually create a plan around that.

Applying the knowledge we learned:

Knowing that my body prefers to have 8.5 hours of sleep per night is very vital information when it comes to waking up earlier.

I want to start waking up at 6:30 AM.

Knowing that I need 8.5 hours of sleep per night means that I need to be in bed and asleep by 10 pm every night–in order to get a proper nights rest.

Now if you looked at my chart, you probably realized that I typically go to sleep around 12 am – 3 am everyday.

Adjusting my life to go to sleep at 10 pm everyday is going to take some time, for sure.

But at least I have a plan–based on data from my personal life–that can help guide me to where I want to go.

That’s what it’s all about right?

You want to live the best life you possibly can, but you don’t know where to start…

So start tracking the things that you are already doing to see how you can optimize them.

I know that I feel great when I average out 8.5 hours of sleep per week. It’s what my body naturally does without an alarm clock blaring in my ear.

So if I want to wake up earlier I need to adjust my lifestyle to suit what my body needs.

Same goes for you and whatever goal or habit you are trying to achieve.

• It takes time.
• It takes patience.
• It takes tracking and planning and adjusting course.
• It takes experimentation to find out what works best for you.

Above all…

It takes consistent effort to become the best person you can be.

I know that’s what I’m trying to do.

How about you?