life
personal development, “life hacks”, all around quality of life improvement
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i have been reading about biphasic or segmented sleep schedules and am rather curious about trying it again. this forum has a lot of good information on starting such a difficult routine. it also contains a lot of information and success stories from people who have changed over to this schedule.
when my daughter was born in 2009, i operated for the first 3+ months of her being home on a polyphasic sleep schedule. simply because she was up every couple hours to feed. so essentially i was sleeping for 2 hours then awake for 30min to feed her. typically i would go to bed around 23:00 and be up around 05:00. this gave me 4 hours of sleep per night and i would usually take about a 1 hour or more nap in the later afternoon. (as any parent can tell you, sleep when you can when it comes to a newborn)
the past several months i have noticed a decrease in mental and physical performance on my behalf, and i think this is simply due to a monophasic sleep pattern. any night i sleep for 7.5+ hours i wake up tired and sluggish, and it typically takes me a better part of 15 minutes to motivate myself. i am typically fine throughout most of the day, however, i find in between 16:00 and 18:00 i slow down and become rather sluggish and have no motivation to work or do anything. this proves to be quite and issue, simply because between 17:00 and 18:00 i am very busy with my family.
my current routine hardly varies, unless i stay up later working on a project or playing wow. so adjusting to a biphasic sleep schedule shouldnt be all that difficult.
my current dilemma is when to take the nap. i have considered taking one after the kids go to bed, which would result in a nap from 20:00 – 21:30 [give or take 30min] then i would get my core sleep from 01:00 – 06:00. one of the other options i have been considering is starting the nap between 11:00 and 12:00. this way i would nap during work hours and have more time in the evening. both options have their positive benefits. the latter may prove to be the most viable option, simply because i work for myself and i would be able to make up time lost during the day working at night, while my family is sleeping.
do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. but after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
— siddhartha gautama – the buddha
a swing set a couple of my friends and i put together for my wifes daycare. it isn’t finished yet, i still need to put the lower clubhouse walls on and the back picnic bench part. (i took the pictures with my blackberry, so they are a little grainy)
  it worked! |
  it worked! |
my wife and i wanted a new entertainment center and we didnt really have the extra money for it. so i set out to build one. here are a couple pictures of what i came up with. it was built out of scrap wood my dad and i had lying around in his wood shop. some of it came from projects at shiloh chapel (the face frame in particular is all wood from shiloh, all 90+ years old). the doors are made out of yellow pine, and i am not too fond of them, and will be making new ones either this week or next.
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last year, for my wifes birthday, i made her a coffee table. i took some wood out of a building i was working on that was built in 1803. most of the wood for the table is 150+ years old. on the bottom, there is a carving of a ship, this particular piece of wood was found inside a wall in one of the oldest parts of the building. below are a couple pictures i took of it. i took pictures of it while i was making it but it appears i have misplaced them. when i find them i will be sure to post them here.
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go here for a few photos of the building. they are before and after renovation pictures.