Category: Life hacks

Sleeping patterns

It’s funny how sometimes you have to adjust your sleeping patterns when you start a new job, get married or make other changes in your life.
Laurie and I are still working out the kinks of getting used to sleeping in the same bed together. Both of us have had our own bed our entire lives including several years where we both had our own rooms and our own beds that were at least full size if not king size. She’s probably a lot more controlled than I am because it seems that I have a tendency to still want to stretch out without thinking there might be someone else in the bed with me.
This morning my hip was bothering me and I started to stretch out my leg and jabbed her in the leg with my knee. Owww.
It’s not the first time I’ve started to stretch without thinking, hopefully the last, but probably not. DOH!
In addition, after working hard Saturday and Sunday, Laurie and I were pretty tired last night and ready to head to bed around 8:30 last night, as opposed to 9:30 or 10:30.
I think going to bed an hour or two earlier threw my internal sleep clock off as well. Normally I have a tendency to wake up around 3:30 a.m. for whatever reason. Still don’t know why but last night, going to bed an hour or so later my body decided to wake up at 1:30 and really threw me for a loop. I didn’t know what was going on.
I thought maybe my clock was broken or somehow I overslept but after gathering my thoughts and checking my cell phone I realized what had happened. Boy – very confusing.
Either way, while we’re still working out our sleep patterns there’s an article from WebMD that’s getting a lot of talk on countless blogs I read.
“Your Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again” has several pointers to increase your energy and get rid of those sluggish afternoons.

  • Eat breakfast
  • Eat every 3-4 hours
  • Fill up on more fiber
  • Fuel your brain with omega-3s (more fish)
  • Stay hydrated
  • Limit caffeine after noon

Good pointers. There’s more that can be found in the article. What have you found that helps increase your energy?

Change your Google route

Now this is just too cool…
From Lifehacker:

Don’t like the driving route Google Maps doled out to you? Now you can change the driving directions by grabbing the blue route line and dragging it to create a new destination point, which will in turn create a new route.
As you drag your new destination point, the route changes on the fly to give you an idea of how your new point will change your route. It’s always been a little annoying—especially when you want to send a map to another person—when you know the default directions don’t highlight the best route, so this excellent and easy-to-use feature will certainly come in useful. To undo your changes, just right-click the new destination point and select “Remove this destination.”

Now if I could just get the map to import into my handheld GPS unit I’d be in absolute heaven.

More from Google

Eating for energy or stress relief?

Lifehacker blogger Brian Armstrong talks about his new ideas behind eating healthy.
While I haven’t been eating the most healthy meals ever, Laurie and I can say that we definitely notice when we haven’t been eating as healthy as we should.
She’s probably eaten healthier than I have for a while so I think her body notices it more. She can definitely tell when she’s had too much sugar in her system.
Armstrong says, “The way I used to eat: I associated unhealthy food with pleasure, and healthy foods with pain.”

I would think about that burger, fries, and milkshake all day. About how juicy and tasty it would be, how satisfied I would be afterwards, and how good it make me feel.

Now he says, “The way I eat now: I associate unhealthy food with pain and healthy food with pleasure.”

Have you ever noticed that after gorging yourself on that burger, fries, and shake…you feel a little bit tired? Have you ever had indigestion, and felt like a brick was lodged in your stomach?
These are the sort of feelings you can begin to associate with unhealthy food.

Armstrong takes it a step further and shows you what you’re doing to your body with unhealthy foods.
Thinking about what your clogged arteries look like when you eat a burger and it may cause you to loose your appetite a lot faster.
See for yourself or watch what happens when a doctor has to put a stint in your heart to keep it working.
(you may not want to look if you have a weak stomach)
On the flip side, think about being full of energy and strength when you eat healthy foods.
If you can re-associate your thinking of healthy foods and unhealthy foods it may make a huge difference in what you decide to eat later on.

Create a silent ringer for your cell phone

Now this is an idea I can really put into use.
Lifehacker has suggested creating a silent ringer for non-priority phone calls on your cell phone.
From a Lifehacker reader:

My cell phone (like most) lets me select a custom ringtone for each contact in my phonebook, however there’s no option to set an individual entry to “not ring”. So I just created a 1 second long recording of “nothing” using my computer, transferred it to my phone, and I can now select it as a custom ringtone for numbers that, while I don’t want to block, I just don’t want to hear.

Why would you want to do this? Well I’m sure you have people in your cellphone book that you don’t need instant notification of their phone call and/or don’t want to be bothered by their phone call. I’m going to try and set it up for folks who aren’t in my phone book. I never answer those calls anyways – might as well not have to worry about hearing the ringer go off.