Three Ideas

1. Building a routine/habit
2. How important sleep and the right food it
3. Mental and physical benefits

They say/I say 2

With popular beliefs telling people to do something spontaneous every day, the general public’s belief of routines have taken on a negative connotation. Some might say that a routine holds a person back from really living their life and others might have the mindset that people that have routines are a dying breed. With the advancement in technology, word about a social event can spread all around the world with the click of a button that causes a butterfly effect so that people change their plans as they are attracted to the next big thing (more like a fly and poop effect). The world is not a routine place, everyone would agree with that, but why does that mean that we can be?

In the article “Why Having a Daily Routine is Important”, the author Tri challenges these stereotypes by showing the world that routines can actually help a person live a better life. She writes that, “One of the more convenient reasons why structure is important is because it negates the need to regularly schedule your days ahead of time” (¶ 3). In a world of chaos and to-do lists, there seems to be a constant need for more time. She later explains that with a schedule that is set, it increases efficiency in everyday life with the idea that ime is not an issue, just a way of condensing tasks all in one day. She believes that a little every day makes little become a lot.

I believe that Tri’s main idea that she tried to push across to her audience was one hundred percent correct. I believe that when you have a mindset that enables you to follow your path, then good things will come down the road. I have experienced this first hand by flipping my morning routine around by waking up an hour and a half earlier that when I would usually wake up. I’ve been doing this by setting three alarms and trying to go to sleep at an earlier time. By breaking my sleeping in habits, I have boosted my mental aptitude and produced gains in the weight room. My view can all be summed up by Benjamin Franklin once said, “your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones”.

4/17 Prompt Post

This weekend I tried waking up early during the weekends and what I found out was that my internal clock was a lot stronger today to the point that when I woke up, it couple minutes before my alarm. What I have learned from this is that a routine based life style becomes stronger when you are consistent with it every single day (what a shocker). What this is propelling me to do is use another app on my phone that sets a bed time that corresponds to the amount of sleep that I would want to get each night. So if I wanted to get 8 hours of sleep, then my alarm automatically sets a time that I should be asleep. This is pretty nifty if I do say myself. This app will also track how well I try to stick with my bed time by showing me the average time I wake up and fall asleep every single day.

Week 4

As of right now I am cruising on my 20-time project. My sleep tracker has recorded every night of sleep since the beginning of my project and even has the sleep average times of the world too. This app has been very successful in the matter of making sure that it wakes me up when I'm not in deep sleep. I believe that because of this reason, my project has been so successful thus far. One tweak I am thinking of making is cutting out information about how my mental state has changed because there hasn't been a noticeable difference in my moods and the app I was using shut down causing it to lose all of my data.
For my elevator pitch, I'm thinking that my hook is going to surround the idea that this project is going to help me as a student next year in college. I have made the choice of playing baseball at Coe College and I need to know the effects that waking up early has on my body; I need to know if this is beneficial to me physically, mentally, and is manageable with my classes. I am excited to see if this is something that my become a part of my future routine.

Week 3

As of right now, I feel like I am in a great spot with how much I have done. My idea has stuck with me and I have found it to interest me more and more each day. Thus far I have gotten myself into 6:30 am performance PE, I have almost become accustomed to my early morning alarm, gotten some great nutritious snacks for my workouts, stuck to my goal of drinking water every morning to rehydrate my body, and finally tracked both my sleep schedule and mental state through a couple different apps that I found online. This is by far no where near complete and I don't have the exact idea of where this will take me, nor what my outcome will be for that matter. Yet, I am excited to go through this experience and to see how well I can do early mornings. I hope when I present this to the class at the ed of the year they will understand that anyone can do it, you just have to set your mind to it.

Checking in

J-Rad:

Interesting idea. What will be the final outcome of your study? How will you measure something like your mental aptitude? Are you hoping to convert yourself to a morning person? Have you not done early bird before? Hmm.

A few ideas you might consider:
- Check out some health and well-being magazines or podcasts
- Consider something like yoga or meditation in the morning to clear the mind
- Get a sleep tracker app on your phone unless you have one of those robot watches so you have actual sleep data
- Align your pre/post workout snacks with the type of workout your doing that is particular to the kind of athletic endeavor you are focusing on

Week 2

What are some easy steps for getting yourself to workout in the am?
What are the scientific affects of working out in the morning have on your mental and physical state?
What are some great pre/post workout snacks?