Hi,
So far my first week of early rising was good, but I also had some setbacks.
From tuesday through saturday (today), I got up at 5h30am, and got to work immediatly. I was able to work a lot on my main project (around 15 hours, which in theory is great). Plus, yesterday, I worked a bit, but I consider it was a pretty relax day, because I mostly had appointements for school projects, a lunch with my boss at noon and a dinner with friends in the evening. So a very social day, and I consider that it was my day off this week
But the first setback came this morning. When I got up, I was tired, like I hadn't slept enough. I have found through experimentation for the last 2 months that if I don't get around 9 hours of sleep each day, after a few days, I become too tired. So, I guess that's what happened this morning. Since I've been getting up at 5h30am, I get around 7,5 to 8 hours of sleep a night. It's really frustrating knowing that I have to sleep 1-2 hours more than most people if I want to have 100% of my mental capacity. I guess I'm gonna have to try to go to bed early (which doesn't always solve the problem, since I can take between 0,5-1 hour to fall asleep sometimes), or get up at 6am. I still haven't decided what to do yet, but if someone has some suggestions on how I could try to regulate my sleep pattern, I'm always open to suggestions. It seems that for me, even if I get up when my alarm goes of, if I'm too tired, I won't be that much productive.
Plus, another setback is that I realized this morning that what I accomplished this week for my main project, well, I may have to trash it and start from scratch.
I'm currently programming a application in Excel that helps design bracing in a steel building. Even though it is a school project, it is a 135 hours project that has to be done alone, and my teacher is currently of no help, so I am basically left on my own. This week I was programming the application so it would be able to design the colums of the bracing. But I realized now that what I did, well, cannot really be used by someone else but me (too complicated and I made some bad progamming choices), plus there are errors in the numbers I obtaining. I got really discouraged and afraid that this project will turn out very badly (as it seems to me it is starting to), that I'm not gonna finish it in time at the end of the semester, that I will have to submit something not functionnal to my teacher, which means I could fail the course and have to do it again (or get a really, really bad grade).
What is also frustrating, is that I not only chose to do this project, I also invented it's subject because I wanted to learn "capacity based design", a really important structural notion that is not taught at the undergraduate level (only at graduate level). So basically, if I'm in this situation, it's my own doing...
In the mean time, until I continue my project tomorrow, I decided for today to focus on another homework, and to read a bit from the book "Feel the fear and do it anyway". The book helped a bit, reading that feeling fear is normal, that it is because I'm doing something new, and that I have to tell myself over and over again that whatever happens, I can handle what comes my way. It's not easy to get it in my mind, especially when my project isn't working right now, but I'm choosing to be positive about it. I'm reminding myself that since it's something new I'm learning, that I'm bound to have setbacks and fail, and that I can't expect myself to do a project of this scope perfectly the first time around. But it's not easy, as I haven't gotten rid of my old mentality of panicking when something goes wrong...
Wow! That was a long post! BTW, sorry if there are some mistakes in what I write, english is after all my second langage.
'Till next time, take care everyone!
Lifequest