A week in a bchallenge

I got promoted… by my self. I was able to spend a full working week going to bed early, waking up at 6 and having a run before my usual day started. Phew.

Despite what friends and colleagues told me (a week is too short as a timeframe; you’re not really changing your behavior; why don’t you continue; etc.) my only aim was to prove my self I was able to do it. And I succeeded.

I also learned some good lessons that might be valuable in the future:

  1. if you want to wake up early, go to bed early;
  2. have a clear agenda; you have to plan in advance how to organize your evening, if you want to go to bed early;
  3. make your effort public; your ego will be a fierce allied in supporting your effort (and to me, having my President aware of this challenge was quite helpful :-) ;
  4. choose your rhythm; always go to bed at the same hour, always wake up at the same hour. This will help your body in assess the change.
  5. communicate your results; daily. Blogging and tweeting every night and morning really helped me in keeping the pace (see also point 3)
  6. resist. eh.
All in all, I enjoyed this week. It helped keeping me focused. And even busier.

bchallenge. Day 4

Everything is becoming mechanical. And I’d say I’m happy this personall chalenge is coming to an end.

I really don’t care waking up at six every morning (there’s a lot of life out there at that time, I don’t feel alone), but I don’t like running in the cold anymore (and this morning we had 9 degrees at 6.10am) and definitely being forced to go to sleep at 11pm is the greatest sacrifice; don’t get me wrong: I’m totally ready to sleep and usually it takes less than 5 minutes… but where’s my after dinner time? that time I usually occupy with a mix of emails, work, thoughts, reading and relax?

But there’s one thing that makes me happy, just read the following bullet list:

  • Wednesday: running
  • Thursday: running
  • Friday: running
  • Saturday: golf
  • Sunday: tennis
  • Monday: running
Not bad at all, huh? :-)

Toughest day in my bchallenge

Today the alarm clock woke me up at 6am as usual, but it was pretty hard get out of the bed, dress me up and go out running. The worst thing was the panic in my legs: after more than a year without running, two days in a row on a 5/6 Km track was probably more than enough.

But I managed to go out for a shorter (probably 4 Km) run, under a stormy sky.

I’m pretty happy with the results so far: I’m responsive during the day and my willingness is pretty strong; I don;t feel any impact on my day life, the only “sacrifice” is having a such shorter evening: going to bed at 11pm means that I have barely 1.5 hours of spare time after dinner.

I will take a pause during the weekend, and start again this experimental challenge on Monday for the last 2 days.