I follow the blog Unclutterer because it often has nifty approaches to tweaking your daily life and schedule to make you more productive. It’s a little less blatantly obvious than Lifehacker (which I also follow) but does fall sometimes into the same PIT OF DOOM of obviousness.
Today [ed: this was a while ago, unfortunately] was one of them—sort of. Annabel Candy described how she used time tracking and a pie chart to identify tasks and procedures that were taking time away from the things she’d rather be doing. She identified 10 “Time Traps” (good phrase!) that she wanted to eliminate or cut down. Most of the traps were excellent places to simplify or eliminate, but one of her identified places for cutback frightened me:
6. Sleep – Try cutting out one hour of sleep. I’ll probably function fine and gain an extra hour a day.
Don’t do it, Annabel! Very few Americans get the sleep they need to be fully productive and alert (I don’t). You may be one of them, but if so, don’t make this your sacrifice. I think you might regret it.
I generally get by on seven-ish hours of sleep a night but I would be delighted if I could work my way around to a constant eight. There are challenges and choices in my life that are impeding that, though. Burning two hours every day on my commuting does not make me want to sleep the extra hour by sacrificing friends, family and home time.
Keep your sleep. You may find that you’re more productive after increasing the amount of sleep
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