My Daily Schedule

I work graveyard shifts. I work from 11:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning Sunday night to Friday morning. I need 7 to 8 hours of sleep every day as most human beings in my age group require. My typical schedule starting Sunday night goes like this:

Sunday night I try to sleep three hours before I go in for work. This allows me just enough rest to stay awake and alert until I get home in the morning.

At work, I work and I stay awake. Then I get off work at around 7 to 7:15 in the morning and I drive home. I get home between 7:15 and 7:30 in the morning. I walk in, take my boots off, go into my bedroom, take off my clothes and crawl into bed. By then it's between 7:20 and 7:35 in the morning). At around this time or a little later, say around 8:00 in the morning, my daughter comes in and wakes me up if I have fallen asleep, with, "The sun is up, it's time to get up Daddy." At that point she crawls into bed with my wife and I and wants "to snuggle with Mommy." Once she's in the bed, she will usually begin telling me about the night's dreams she had. At around 8:30 to 8:45 AM I drift off to sleep.

I am woken up any time between 12:30 and 1:30 PM. On a good day, this equals 5 to 6 hours of good sleep. On a bad day it equals 4 to 5 hours. If I get to sleep those 3 hours before the next shift starts that adds up to a total of 7 total hours on a bad day and 8 to 9 total hours on a good day.

Now I would say that I have more bad days than good days as far as sleep goes. I would say that my average is around 5 to 6 total sleep hours per day. But you have to take into consideration something I call "The Man Factor." When a man complains about something in his life he tends to exaggerate either he makes something out to be too great or too little depending on the circumstances and which description will benefit his side of an argument or garner him the most sympathy. So taking into account "The Man Factor," in my self reporting, I would say that I probably average 7 hours of sleep per day. That's one hour short of what we need but it's very doable. Now in all honesty I do have certifiable bad days. Days when I am woken up at 12:15 after falling asleep only 5 hours before. And sometimes the way I get woken up is just bad. Who needs to wake up to absolute stress after only 5 hours of sleep. There have even been days when I've had to get up with only 3 hours of sleep. Those are rare but I don't forget them.

Now I have two young kids and so this kind of thing is to be expected. I accept that. But let's keep moving here, there's still more of my day to cover.

So I get up at, on a good day, 1:30PM and go to the bathroom. I get myself together, take a shower, etc. So I'm ready for the rest of the day by around 2:15 PM. So let's see how much time do I have left in the day from this point? I have to go back to work at 11:00 PM. So on a good day I have 9 whole hours left in the day. Now if you're generous and allow me to sleep three hours before I go into work then I really only have about 5 hours. Now in how many of those hours are my kids up? They go to bed between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM. So that gives me about 5 hours with them. Now once I get up my wife usually has some things that she needs to do and needs me available to watch one or both of the kids to make, those tasks easier to accomplish. My wife is a capable woman who can accomplish the items on her to do lists with both kids in tow if she needs to.

Now I also go to school part time. I have mountains of reading for one class and hours of lab time for another. The lab time gets cut down significantly because I have the software needed to finish my projects on my laptop. This way I can work whenever I have a chance. The reading unfortunately takes a huge hit. It is impossible to read my assignments at home with my family present. By now you've probably figured out that I don't have too much time to be with my family. If I were to go to the library for 2 to 3 hours to read each day and then spend another 2 to 3 hours each day working on my lab assignments, well you get the idea. No time at home with the family, which in my life is mandatory by choice.

Often at home I play with the kids to keep them entertained during the time I am awake. This gives my wife a welcome break at time and opportunities to to work on her packages or other things that she wants to do, or things that need to be done around the house.

I struggle with doing what I need to do during the time I have between shifts. I have been trying to run a business and it's just not working. I just do not have the time I need to do what needs to be done to get it off the ground the way I want to. It requires travel within the area and time with clients. Time I just don't have. I have to divide my time with cleaning up the little disasters that occur in one's life on a daily basis, school, spending time with my children, and wife. So that's my life right now. I spend most of my "Internet time" at night when it gets slow and even that is not that much. I always have a plan when I get home for what I need to do when I wake up and I never accomplish it. There's always something that comes up or gets in the way or takes greater precedence.

I need to start taking my own advice about success.