By Alec Hogg
Six months ago a friend taught me a new life hack. He shared that each morning before his family awakes, he invests half an hour in writing three material things that happened to him the day before.
Since adding this discipline to my own early morning routine, I’ve become more attentive to life by seeking out interesting things to write about the next morning. This journaling brought a couple of other benefits: revision reinforces the short-term memory; and it also serves as a useful record of commitments made by myself and others.
After a sleep-deprived trans-continental flight on Friday night, I came across another great life hack, this time courtesy of Inc.com. The publication for entrepreneurs carried an article encouraging us to create a “sleep diary” with a simple rating system based on rest we had the night before. Pretty soon, Inc argues, we come to appreciate how much sleep affects the quality of our decision-making.
Makes sense to me. I’m rarely grumpy after an eight-hour stretch, and hardly at my best post a four hour sleep that comes standard on long-haul flights. Sometimes such deprivation is unavoidable. But keeping a sleep diary is a simple way of increasing those days when peace of mind rules. Which is rather important because, as the great Roman emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in 120 AD, “our life is what our thoughts make it…”
