otrops: jeff van campen’s personal blog

Last week’s goal

Waking up a 6am went much better than expected. I didn’t actually get up at 6:00 am on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t think this is a problem. On some previous weekends, “sleeping in” meant sleeping until eleven or even noon. When I’m getting up at six on weekdays, getting up at eight (Sunday) or nine (Saturday) is getting up late. This means that even if I sleep in on the weekends, I still have most of the day ahead of me. This is an unexpected, but encouraging, consequence of getting up at 6:00 am.

For the rest of the week I woke up at 5:55 am. I think that the thing that helped me with this was not turning off the alarm until I had my feet firmly on the floor. This encouraged me to get out of bed quickly, mostly because I don’t want to wake Joanne. This means I don’t actually wake up in bed. I do most of my waking up as I’m downloading podcasts and making coffee. It takes about 15 minutes before I’m fully human.

This week’s goal

This week’s goal is to drink 3 liters of water a day.

Why?

I’ve been much better about drinking water now that we finally (after years) purchased a Brita jug. Nevertheless, there are a some days when for whatever reason, I don’t drink enough water. I can usually tell because I tend to have less energy when I have been drinking enough fluids. So this week will be about making sure I’m getting at least 3 liters of water a day. This is slightly more than the usual recommendations, but the recommendations also mention that you should slightly more when you’re exercising. I’ve been running and now that I’m starting a new job, I’ll also be riding my bike to and from work.

How?

In order to ensure I’m getting the water I need. I’m going to:

1. Buy a 1L bottle of water on my way to work today.
2. Carry the bottle with me everywhere.
3. Keep the bottle on my desk at home and at work.
4. Ensure the bottle is full when I get up first thing in the morning, when I come back from lunch and when I get home.

For now, I’ll get a normal bottle of water. I’d like to get a bottle that is somewhat more rugged — perhaps Something along these lines — because it will make it easier to carry around in my bag. For the moment, I’m going to go with the flimsy water bottle. Not having the nicer bottle could easily become an excuse for delaying this goal, but I’m not going to let that happen. It starts today.