I've been trying to sleep less, ideally between 4 and 7 hours a night. It's amazing when you get 20 hours in a day - it's almost like two distinctively different days. I feel twice as alive as when sleeping 8, 10, or 12 hours.
I'm still adjusting to it, though. Often I'm slower immediately upon waking up, which is not great, but not terrible. The way I start my day is by stretching and going for a walk or otherwise exercising, then eating some simple food, and having a shower. That first hour or two comes pretty automatically.
But then, I find my energy waxes and wanes more when on lower sleep. I actually feel more alert during my peak moments when sleeping less, but then I hit a low patch of exhaustion for 20 minutes to an hour every so often. During this time, my mind is mostly empty and scrambled.
The danger is that it's easy to get into some mindless clicking around at that point, and get stuck in click-click-click-click online for the next few hours. Normally when my mind is foggy, I like to do really low level admin that doesn't require thought: Reply to routine emails, clean something, things like that. Right now, though, it was a little frustrating, because I have basically no low level tasks to be done. Inbox is pretty much empty, no errands to run, my things are generally clean and orderly. So I was starting to click-click-click mindlessly.
I mixed some instant coffee and went outside. I'm staying on top of Mount Davis on Hong Kong Island, and lightning was striking across the water on the Kowloon Peninsula. So I sat out there watching the lightning strike again and again.
One of my favorite foods is oatmeal. It's a complex carb with a high amount of fiber, so you feel full all morning after eating it. It's dirt cheap. It's incredibly easy to make - you stir some boiling water into it. Thus, you can make it even without a full kitchen, like if you're in a hotel. The taste is kind of bland, nothing special, but you get used to it pretty quickly. If you want to spice it up more, any kind of fruit mixes well into it. If you're training, you can stir in flax seed for higher calories and protein, and then it takes on roughly the taste and texture of soft pretzels.
I love the stuff. I eat it whenever I can, which is pretty often. However, there's one downside of oatmeal - it's brutal to clean if you let it dry on a plate.
It's trivially easy to clean if you clean it while it's hot. Run a sponge over it once, or even just rinse a few times with very hot water. But after the stuff dries, it becomes a nightmare to scrape off.
I try to clean up immediately after breakfast, but sometimes I read, or write, or work on spec'ing something out with breakfast, and I might get lost in thought.
The time needed to clean up the oatmeal goes up drastically the longer you let pass. Clean up right after eating? 20 seconds or so. Three hours later? A few minutes. And if you let a whole day pass? You're going to be scrubbing that bowl in the sink for 10+ minutes.
