A Life Lesson in Seven Hours Sleep

The title suggests I may have had a "vision" of some sort in my dream. Not quite.

Instead, my entry this morning could be as simple as—"Past three nights’ sleep totals: 4 hours, 4 hours, 7 hours. Feeling better after the seven hours."

That is important but it does not capture the lesson learned because I think that the lesson learned in this case is more than simply “get more sleep”.

Get more sleep implies a better balance. I won’t deny that that is something I need.

Get more sleep in this case, however, implies, in my mind, something a little more. It is not just balance. I try to get in “a little of this and a little of that.” I try to do “a little of this and a little of that.” And, I can sometimes achieve, “a little of this and a little of that” but the key here is “little.” Little time. Little attention. Sometimes that implies little quality.

I have heard and read that there is increasing evidence that humans don’t multi-task very well. In this case, multi-tasking implying trying to do more than one thing at the SAME time. I’d go further to say that it is not clear that this human can even do more than one thing at a time in rapid succession very well. Sometimes I may be forced (by a combination of pressures put on me and choices I have made) to try to do that. But it doesn’t usually work out as well as planned.

The seven hours sleep last night indicate that I needed to give more attention to one thing. It worked. The key for balance may be more to know which thing in my life needs the most attention right away rather than trying to distribute my attention each day. The challenge is working within the constraints that I face based on previous choices. And, for that, I have no easy answer other than to press on while giving more attention to the choices I need to make wisely and with guidance and serenity granted to me by God.