The February Family Resolution
On the surface, the February Family Resolution was a bit.. boring. It was, however, probably the most successful Family Resolution I could have imagined!
The idea for February was that we be well rested, this involved working out how much sleep we each needed, what we needed in order to go to sleep, and looking to see what helped motivate us to get up and going in the morning.
We decided that the first thing we would work on, was how much sleep we needed and then actually get that much sleep each night. We did this by making a note of what time we went to sleep and then having previously turned off all alarms slept until we woke up naturally. We even made sure, by trying to untrain ourselves from our normal wake up time by trying to fall back asleep after we woke up which meant I got an extra hour to sleep!
Unsurprisingly, we all needed a different amount of sleep and we repeated the experiment a few times over the month, and found that our first try was accurate and indeed that extra few winks of sleep I was encouraging everyone to have after they woke at the normal waking time, was actually needed sleep.
It's weird, but I think we saw the differences straight away.
We were all a lot more with it in the mornings, we were able to get ready a little faster and Dan Jon's sugar levels seemed to level out a little more easily than in the past.
We each tailored our bedtime routines to our own tastes and made adjustments to things in our bedrooms to ensure we were comfortable. Top Ender started sleeping in her bed the "other" way round, decided that she quite liked to have her fan on all night (but turned off before she got out of bed), whilst Flyfour and I liked to listen to music quietly playing as we drifted off (If we went to sleep at the same time that is).
We decided that we all needed to go to sleep a little earlier on a Sunday night (just thirty minutes) to set us up for the week and we fine-tuned our morning routines so that we could each have a lay-in, to read, or doze or just enjoy being in bed with nothing scheduled for the next twenty minutes or so.
I'm rather enjoying keeping this resolution.
The idea for February was that we be well rested, this involved working out how much sleep we each needed, what we needed in order to go to sleep, and looking to see what helped motivate us to get up and going in the morning.
We decided that the first thing we would work on, was how much sleep we needed and then actually get that much sleep each night. We did this by making a note of what time we went to sleep and then having previously turned off all alarms slept until we woke up naturally. We even made sure, by trying to untrain ourselves from our normal wake up time by trying to fall back asleep after we woke up which meant I got an extra hour to sleep!
Unsurprisingly, we all needed a different amount of sleep and we repeated the experiment a few times over the month, and found that our first try was accurate and indeed that extra few winks of sleep I was encouraging everyone to have after they woke at the normal waking time, was actually needed sleep.
It's weird, but I think we saw the differences straight away.
We were all a lot more with it in the mornings, we were able to get ready a little faster and Dan Jon's sugar levels seemed to level out a little more easily than in the past.
We each tailored our bedtime routines to our own tastes and made adjustments to things in our bedrooms to ensure we were comfortable. Top Ender started sleeping in her bed the "other" way round, decided that she quite liked to have her fan on all night (but turned off before she got out of bed), whilst Flyfour and I liked to listen to music quietly playing as we drifted off (If we went to sleep at the same time that is).
We decided that we all needed to go to sleep a little earlier on a Sunday night (just thirty minutes) to set us up for the week and we fine-tuned our morning routines so that we could each have a lay-in, to read, or doze or just enjoy being in bed with nothing scheduled for the next twenty minutes or so.
I'm rather enjoying keeping this resolution.