I had hoped to have this post up much earlier than this. How funny that my goal for this week is to get 8 hours of sleep and I am down to the wire of getting to sleep in time. Plus, I didn’t exercise today. I simply ran out of time. I’m not going to beat myself up about it though. I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep and start fresh tomorrow. Which brings me to this week’s goal.
You may have noticed that none of the goals I have set so far have related to housekeeping. The reason? How can I expect to get my house in order if I’m not even taking care of myself?
Too often I am up too late and then have to get up early. 6 hours of sleep does not a fully functioning Jackie make. :-)
I have always said that I am a day person. 8:00 a.m. to 8 p.m. are my optimum hours. In college I used to say that if a paper wasn’t finished by 10:00 p.m. then it would have to wait until the next day because I needed my sleep.
My mom has always said that if I didn’t get enough sleep and was stressed, I would often get sick. She said that in Kindergarten I would take a nap in the afternoons when I got home and then still go to bed by 8:00 p.m. I have always required a lot of sleep.
However, since becoming a mom I have stayed up late more often because that is the only time when it is quiet in the house. Yet, I still need plenty of sleep so that I am able to function during the day. I think I need to be better at managing my days so that I don’t have to stay up late to get everything done.
My goal for this week will be as follows: Get 8 hours of sleep per night. This means that on school nights I need to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. and up at 6:00 a.m. Weekends will be a little more flexible. Maybe I will even get more than 8 hours some nights.
Now, I am sure there will be times when I am up late during the upcoming holiday season. Likewise, if one of the kids is sick, I may not get anywhere near 8 hours of sleep. Life happens.
In addition to my goal of getting 8 hours of sleep per night, I am going to try to introduce one more goal this week. It is something that I will build upon the rest of the year.
I often have trouble drinking enough water. During pregnancy and while breastfeeding getting enough fluids is critical. However, I have never met a goal of drinking 64 ounces of water per day. I believe the reason is that I try to start drinking 8 glasses right away. Baby steps are the approach that seems to be working best for me.
I have debated about how to work this goal into this 11 week series. I thought about spending a week on it, but then decided that I would spend the rest of the year building up to drinking 64 ounces of water per day.
I will start by drinking 1 (8 ounce) glass of water each day this week. Next week I will drink 2 glasses and so on. I think adding 1 glass of water per week will be the best way to ensure that I will succeed.
Well, I better get to bed if I am going to make my goal of getting 8 hours of sleep. How much sleep do you get each night?
If you would like to print out my week 4 checklist please click the picture below.