Work Life Balance: What is your evening routine?
As this is starting to become a regular Friday segment (maybe because the weekend makes me think about having fun) I thought I would talk about something really important to all of us entrepreneurs yet we all get little of …. sleep.
I am a restless sleeper and through various aids am able to have a pretty sound night’s sleep. Luckily I haven’t found myself sleepwalking and raiding the fridge at 3am.
ZenHabit has a good article to cure insomnia but I think this applies to us entrepreneurs. It recommends exercise to get yourself tired and ready for bed but most of all it puts getting to bed at a regular time as critical.
When deep on a project I kept finding myself staying up until 2 or 3am and then sleeping until 9am because I needed to get something out the door in time for the client to see it in the inbox when they got in at 8am.
No more. If it was gonna be late I let the client know. Most important for me is that once I started to see the slipping time window I would figure out how to fix it or find a resource to help.
I also have put a hard stop on sitting with the computer in front of the TV. I have started to Tivo everything so I don’t worry about missing something on a late show and I don’t turn the radio on.
So what is your evening routine?
I usually go to the gym when I find the time, and sometimes I do background research and or fun stuff around the company.
Having trouble sleeping occurs only when I am forced to work overnight the previous day…
Thanks for the link!
This is an interesting post. I must say that my routine is very much the stay up until 3 am and sleep until 10am. We are at the very early stage of our start-up and most of our development and QA takes place late at night when everybody can buckle down and focus. The day is riddled with phone calls, sales pitches, networking, emails, etc. and makes it hard to concentrate. The days are long and usually go from abou 10am to 3am consistently 5 days a week. Weekends usually only 8-10 hour days. The saving grace is that I usually go to the gym or play tennis with my co-founder who has free access to both (crucial!) and we go after dinner maybe 3 nights a week so that we don’t get fat. Not the ideal evening routine but has definitely allowed us to be incredibly productive as we build OnCard Marketing.
Well, in the beginning the hours can get weird but if the pace keeps up burn out and startup fatigue can set in. Keep a check on other and have them watch you in case your work starts to suffer. Eventually you will get in a better work pattern.
My evening routine is to carry on what I was doing during the day, at least for now.
I enjoy what I do, therefore I don’t really see it too much like a chore.
I generally try to take the weekends off though to relax and refresh.