I had just started a new position with my organization and was still getting used to the first year of graduate school when I attended the 4-Day Accelerator. I was tired when I arrived at work and exhausted when I went home to study. God used that time to teach me the importance of rest. At that point, I had only one storyline — work.
Right away, I realized I had to spend time considering how to bring back the missing storylines — health, relationships and play.
One small change made all the difference. I reset my alarm clock to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. and rise at 5:00 a.m. to do my graduate work before going to my job each day. Know what I discovered? Simply moving schoolwork from weekends and evenings to weekday early mornings cut the time and effort in half.
That one simple step opened up time for relationships that had gone to the back burner when I started school. I began to schedule bi-weekly FaceTime meetings with long-distance relatives and bi-weekly dinners with local friends and relatives.
The other thing that happened was I was able to do something fun each week and start dreaming about both the short term (90 days) and long term (bucket list) future. In other words, scheduling sleep allowed me to begin dreaming about life and to take steps in making those dreams a reality.