I was writing a review of the fantastically fascinating, engaging and entertaining (I liked this book) Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker and realised
that as I typed, I had that sludgy, slightly nauseous feeling of discomfort, commonly
known as: someone is trying to tell me something.
I’m pushing
it on that old sleep thing again.
Again.
Maybe a sequel to Tea & Chemo should be
the trials and tribulations of getting enough sleep? Although I fear the book
would be very short and very repetitive, here's the blurb: she wants to
sleep, she knows she should sleep but she finds it so very difficult to go to
bed. And repeat.
The bottom
line is, I want it all, but I just can’t squeeze it all in. And the truth is
that when I skimp on the sleep, I can.
When I
examine my work, it’s the wealth of correspondence which weighs me down. I am always
in debt and never, ever get to the bottom of my RSVPs before the next deluge
soaks my day.
I remember
the headline a year ago about paying employees for correspondence outside of
office hours because researchers had discovered that people were spending their
travel time to and from work, and more time once they’d got through their own
front door, catching up on emails.
No sh**
Sherlock.
How many
of us have a love/hate relationship with our phone? True, it makes me smile
when a message comes in. It's useful always having my camera with me and iPlayer and books on Audible streamed into my hearing aids have accompanied me on many a hot-foot to an appointment. But what started out for all of us as a great use
of time as the train transported us to our destination - flying through emails, reports, links and 'pre-reading' for tomorrow's meeting just a few short hours away - has only lengthened our working day. And I don’t like that part
one single bit.
Worse, when
in the news yesterday we hear that a group of MPs are urging the government to
look into the effect of hands-free phoning on our driving, there’s an instant backlash of people saying they can’t manage their job without using
the phone in the car. The fact is, we can’t work from the
next life, either, and more’s the sobering point, work would seem much less of
a priority if we were coping with having killed or injured somebody because we
lost concentration at the wheel.
Nonetheless, the truth is that in the world we
live in, some jobs wouldn’t be viable without people being able to communicate
from behind the wheel. End of. We have built a society which relies on people working at
work, before work, after work and travelling to and from work. And unless this
is forced to unilaterally shift, I can’t see that this state of affairs is going to change for the better any time soon, as we continue careering forward in
this ever increasingly techno future.
The problem
is the speed of it all, isn’t it. I remember the good old days of freelance
copywriting, when I had to tootle off to the post office three days before my
deadline, with a floppy disk and a hard copy of the writing in question, all
packed up ready to trundle off to the destination of my assignment. For the
following week, while I awaited its delivery and the typed letter in return, I could
Do Something Else.
These days,
ticking off the to-do list doesn’t shorten it, does it? Because once we
respond, the reply comes back, and quickly, generally, because we’re all caught
in the same trap: get it done before it builds up! And so the circle continues.
If we are to break the circle, it is going to have to be a conscious decision
to snap it.
And what
if we did snap it?
I have a
plan. A real plan. And it starts in September. It’s not just a plan for me but
one for everybody. We have to sign up emotionally and physically, but it’s
free.
Join me?
More information in my next post 😊
Meanwhile,
here’s that review. If you routinely go to bed after midnight and wake only a
few small hours later, you need to read this book.
