I am SO excited to share this glimpse of my goal planning process with you. For three years now I’ve used Lara Casey’s Powersheets, a goal planning workbook designed to help people of ALL personalities determine God’s priorities for their lives. Through a detailed preparation process, you determine your goals for the year, then break those goals down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks.
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“Follow your heart” – this is Disney’s recommendation for those seeking life direction. But it’s not just Disney; it’s the kindergarten curriculum and the children’s books, the songs on the radio and graduation cards. When choosing a life path, we’re supposed to “do what we love” – because if we’re doing what we love, we’ve found our calling. Right?
Six years of my career was spent in higher education, five of those years as a college counselor. As I sit down with parents and students, some starry-eyed and optimistic, others uncertain and under pressure, I frequently come back to the “Disney lie”: That doing what you love is the ticket to success, and that success – in and of itself – will lead to long term happiness.
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This week on the Uniquely Woman podcast, Lisa and I discuss how we chose our “words of the year” – because there’s nothing magical about January 1st. We also talk about how we arrived at our words and how we break down our goals into practical steps, and our motives behind those particular aims for 2017.
I write this on the cusp of my favorite day of the year: January first. The thought of closing one book and opening another – a blank page soon to be filled – thrills me with anticipation! I spent a few hours last week going through my Powersheets, deciding where to direct my energy in 2017. To be honest, I’m leaving 2016 with one word in my head: tired.
I’m tired. But there’s a twinge of satisfaction in that admission, because our word for 2017 was “push”. We challenged ourselves to push through difficulty, to push back against laziness, to push for a good marriage, and I can testify to those achievements. I know this next year holds more opportunity to push through hard things, but I’m ready for a change.
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If you want to be consistently productive in 2017, you need good sleep habits.
When someone asks me to help them be productive, I start by asking when they go to bed. Nine times out of ten the answer is midnight or later. The same people who put sleep on the backburner struggle to get up in the morning, be on time, get their tasks done, and cultivate healthy habits in fitness and diet. That’s why a productive lifestyle all turns on this single point: sleep.
All of your goals for the new year depend on how much sleep you get. Your energy to pursue new hobbies, your attention to work toward that promotion, your desire to get into God’s Word, your hope to lose fat and build muscle all depend on how you discipline your sleep habits. If you struggled to be productive this year, don’t expect anything to change until your sleep patterns change.
This is perhaps the most undisciplined area in the American lifestyle. We celebrate lack of sleep like it’s a badge of honor, when really it’s a sign of a foolish lack of stewardship. Think I’m coming down on this topic a little heavy? I am! This is not just a physical issue – it’s a spiritual one.
God created us with a need for sleep. Before technology invaded our lives and homes, and even before electricity, sleep came more naturally. When it got dark, we went to bed. Now we stay up late to work, to watch, or to play, only to rise the next morning groggy and poorly rested. We have no idea just how detrimental this is to our health and focus – or maybe we do, and we just ignore it.
But we can’t afford to ignore it. We need sleep. God designed sleep as a necessary part of the human existence. To ignore it is to spurn God’s design. As John Piper puts it:
“Sleep is a parable that God is God and we are mere men. God handles the world quite nicely while a hemisphere sleeps. Sleep is like a broken record that comes around with the same message every day: Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. Don’t let the lesson be lost on you.” (Read the rest)
Don’t pretend you don’t need sleep – you do! BusinessInsider recognized twenty three benefits to getting more sleep, including:
Not to mention the plethora of health benefits to a good night’s sleep.
To refuse discipline in this area is to refuse God’s design. We do not get to decide we “don’t need sleep”, and if we want to see positive changes in work, love, and recreation, sleep has to be the first thing to change.
Even if you recognize the benefits of sleep, many people complain that they can’t fall asleep – so rather than learn how, they stay up until exhaustion forces them to slumber.
Quite often, this inability to fall asleep is linked to technology use:
Using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop at bedtime may be staving off sleep, according to Harvard Medical School scientists, who have found specific wavelengths of light can suppress the slumber-inducing hormone melatonin in the brain. (Newsweek)
So if you spend your evenings staring at a screen, that’s probably why you lay in bed for an hour each night!
The solution here isn’t to “bide time” by staring at more screens. The first step is to create an evening routine so your mind and body recognize when it’s time for bed. Then, if you struggle to fall asleep (like I used to), try one of these tips.
Personally, I use the 4-7-8 breathing trick to help me fall asleep in under a minute – or five, but either one is a victory. A few other tricks I use to fall asleep each evening:
Your mornings and evenings are connected by sleep. If you want to get a jump on your morning routine or boost your productivity as a mom, you need to set a bed time!
Josh and I get up at 5:30 AM, so we go to bed by 9:30 PM. This doesn’t mean we’re always asleep by 9:30; more often than not we’re reading aloud or talking until 10-10:30. What matters is that the process is started, and even if we fall asleep by 10:30 we’re still getting seven hours.
Your bedtime is essential to your productivity. Certainly there will be some exceptions – parties, late work nights and the like. But make your bedtime a priority and you’ll have much more energy for every day.
While naps can help us survive tough seasons and weird work schedules, they don’t compensate for a lack of good sleep.
Power naps play a key role in supplementing regular sleep patterns, but don’t fall prey to the belief that they can replace hours of deep sleep. Once you decide to power nap, set a timer or alarm for 20 or 30 minutes to ensure that you don’t oversleep, which can cause your body to shift from power napping to full-fledged sleeping. If this happens and you awaken during the middle of a sleep cycle, you can experience sleep inertia — excessive grogginess, fatigue and disorientation that can completely offset the potential benefits of taking a nap.” (Read more)
Take the time to get a good night’s sleep. Recognize the spiritual practice of rest; your need to take time away from the urgent to let your body do what God designed it to do. Sleep rejuvenates your body for what God has called you to do. You need it!
Sleep is the most powerful cognitive enhancer we know of, and without it people are much more impaired than they realize. Just as a drinker emerging from the bar is not the best judge of his ability to drive, many of society’s four-hour sleepers should not be operating heavy machinery. (Read more)
Need more tips on improving sleep so you can achieve grace-driven productivity? Click here.
