In 2024, I want to do more than I did in 2023. I want to create more new origami designs. I want to write more lines of code for my personal programming projects. I want to write more blog posts. I want to gain more rating points in chess. I want to meet more people and make more friends. I want to lift more weights.

(These goals were written in the order in which they came to mind.)

In order to do more, I need more time and more energy.

More Energy

In order to get more energy, I need to sleep better and more consistently. For many years, my sleep has been erratic with me sleeping very little on some nights and then a lot on other nights to catch up on sleep debt. This is probably terrible for my health, and I think it’s bad for my overall productivity because on days when I get little sleep, I don’t think as clearly. Then, on days when I get too much sleep, I usually wake up feeling lazy with not many hours in the day left to do anything.

Recently, I read this article on sleep. It advocates two things: (1) wake up at a consistent time every day and (2) going to bed at a flexible time based on your body’s “tiredness”. By doing this, the author found their sleep patterns to settle into a natural rhythm. It’s an appealing idea because it promises consistency without ignoring biology.

The same author also advocates a really interesting method for waking up at a consistent time every day. Essentially, his observation is that using willpower to get out of bed is difficult and reliable. I think anybody who has trouble with sleep can agree with this. Therefore, he suggests practicing waking up in order to rely on habit instead of willpower. During the day, when you’re still wide awake, find some time to go to bed and pretend that you’re sleeping. Then, set an alarm to go off in a few minutes. Then, when the alarm goes off, practice performing your ideal morning routine. That’s it. In the morning, when your alarm goes off, you’ll automatically do what you practiced.

I’ve been doing this for the last two weeks, and it’s been working pretty well. There are still a few days when I fail to do what I practiced, but most days I wake up at a consistent time now. My issue is with the second part of this approach to sleep: going to bed at a flexible time. At least once or twice a week, I end up hanging out late with friends an getting home around midnight. It’s not the worst, but it makes my bedtime somewhat unflexible on those nights because it takes does some time to wind down and feel tired after socializing.

More Time

In order to get more time, I need to spend less time doing things that don’t matter. This includes playing blitz chess, looking at social media, watching youtube, etc. I think I can easily save at least 1 hour per day by cutting out these sorts of behaviors. And if I spend an extra hour per day on my goals, that would be an extra 366* hours per year (2024 is a leap year!).

I’m not sure about a strategy for doing this. Unlike sleep, I only know how to rely on willpower and mindfulness to recognize that I am wasting time and to stop ddoing it. This is unreliable. I’ve heard about this book Atomic Habits. Maybe I’ll give it a read.