Be efficient, happy and ultimately successful

September 2015 · 4 minute read

Now that I know what my body is capable of, I need to maximise the use of my time to be efficient, happy and ultimately successful in what I want to accomplish. The first thing I need to do is regulate my sleeping pattern, I read an article in the paper last week (yes, the hard copy news paper, they still exist) about a man who underwent a study at Auckland University to essentially reset his sleeping patterns based on his preexisting weekly routine. It took four week for him to reset… I reckon I could do it two.

Based on an average 4.5-5 hours of sleep per night, 5 coffees and 4 beers per day, with little food or exercise in the last two weeks and the surprising amount of procrastination I can still manage to fit in. I’ll let you know how it works out…

The next step is to decide how much time I want to focus on different areas of my life. I’ve already decided to slow down the training (maybe look into fighting again next year) but still want to maintain the fitness and skills. I’ve also decided it’s time to focus on getting to the future, which is the main reasons I’m sleeping so late. This is also the first time in my life that I really appreciate being single (I’m not exactly ideal girlfriend material anyway – but that’s another story), I’ve got more friends than I’ve ever had and I’m more focused and determined than before. So for me, putting time into my social life it also pretty high on the priority list. I never understood the value of friendships before and to be honest, I didn’t really care to understand either.

It’s funny, I’m starting to realise things about myself (and other people) that I’d never really thought about before. Like just the other day, after all these years of not having a favourite colour or not caring, I came to the realisation that my favourite colour is actually blue. In a ridiculously overcrowded black wardrobe, the most prominent other colour is blue. That’s not to say that I don’t like other colours, it’s just that I am clearly inclined to veer towards blue. It feels like I’ve just woken up and all of a sudden realised exactly what it is that I want in life and what’s important to me.

Now to prioritise… Work obviously is #1, if work I get to eat and eating makes me happy, I get to save and saving makes me happy and well, most people really need to work so they can live. #2 is a bit of a toss up, you see I love the gym. I’m a little bit vain so I like to look good, I’m actually reasonably coordinated and I like to able to do things that other people can’t do, also I’ve made a lot of friends through training. But on the other hand, my future is also really important to me. I want to be successful and financially secure, and I want to do it all before I get too old, before I have a family. I’m not ready to settle down or to settle for that matter. Besides, intimate relationships distract you from being yourself. I think people need to learn to be themselves before they can truly nurture someone else. Anyway, now that my injuries have healed it will be interesting to see how the gym affects my digital progress…

#4 is definitely friends. There’s no point in working so hard to get to the top if you’ve got no one to enjoy it with. Some of the friendships I’ve made in the last two years are probably some of the most genuine ones I’ll ever experience. Now, I’m not by any means saying that I have a lot of friends, what I’m saying is the friends that I do have are good ones.

And that about takes up all the time I can find into a week… I can’t even find time to fit in cooking, I’ve eaten out daily for nearly twenty-one days straight right now. I love cooking and I’m pretty good at it too but there’s just so much more work involved than simply just cooking. Cleaning is right to the back of the list but that’s okay because who likes cleaning anyway? And because I try not to have people over unannounced. Although I value my friends, I also heavily value my privacy. I’m also starting to get to the point where #todo’s slip my mind, thank goodness for iPhones and google calendar! Maybe I just need to stop wasting so much time thinking about doing stuff and actually just do it.