I was listening to a phone in on the radio last week.  The presenter was inviting people to call in with their reactions to a caller whose morning alarm clock goes off in ten minute increments a full two hours before he has to get out of bed! 

“What kind of lunacy is this?” I thought. The common kind, it turns out, as caller after caller got in touch to say they either did the same thing or their partner did (and if it was their partner, you can guarantee it drove them bananas). 

I don’t use an alarm clock.  I tell myself what time I need to wake up, and I usually wake up around that time, then I get up.  On the rare occasion I sleep through my internal alarm clock, I have a husband, two kids and a dog who will happily make enough noise to alert me to the fact it is morning.

I don’t like lying in on weekdays because there are things to be done, and I know from experience that if I procrastinate even a little about getting out of bed, I will have a very slow and foggy morning.  I prefer to do my mornings ‘ripping off the plaster style’ and get out of bed on waking (unless I wake in the wee small hours, in which case I write, which usually leads me back to the land of nod).

I listened to the radio show callers in horror, imagining the torture of my alarm going off at regular intervals from 5am but not getting out of bed until 7am.  But the more I listened to the callers explain their position, the more it started to make sense.  These were the people who like a lie in, the one’s who can think of nothing better than rolling over and going back to sleep when their alarm goes off.  If they woke at 2am they wouldn’t look at the clock and think, ‘bollocks, I’ll never get back to sleep now,’ as they start to recite their daily to-do list or ruminate over the fact the guy in the supermarket short-changed them by fifty pence. Oh no, these are the people that can look at their clock at 2am and think, ‘yes! I get five more hours in bed!’ then promptly fall back asleep.  I am not one of these people, and so it took me a few minutes to understand that for them, setting their alarm clock two hours early gives them the luxury of a really long lie in, and they gave themselves this gift every morning.  They were cheat coding their own life! 

It got me thinking where I cheat code my life, and I found a few examples where I find satisfaction in the small wins:

• Face washing: sometimes I like to wash my face a couple of hours before bed, instead of just before bedtime.  Why does this feel like a win?  I get really tired at bedtime, and one less thing to do in the bathroom before I settle down for the night feels like a little win.  On a meditation retreat last year that involved meditating until 10pm, I would wash my face and brush my teeth at last break,  so at 10pm all I had to do was use the loo and fall into bed, win!

• Filling water bottles: I’ve made a rod for my own back here, but I am the designated water-bottle-filler-upper in my house.  If the kids don’t have water bottles by their beds at bedtime, you can guarantee they won’t get up to get them, but will instead lie there thirstily and complain about it in the morning.  So, rightly or wrongly, I fill ‘em up and deposit them on bedside tables before bedtime.  But again, I’m tired at bedtime, so sometimes I do it an hour or two earlier, and when bedtime comes round, win!

• Early dinner: when my husband is away, I eat early with the kids.  Dinner is done and the kitchen clean and tidy by 6pm, leaving the rest of the evening wide open.  This one feels like such a win that if my husband gets home early from work, we’ll all eat early.  Winner, winner, early dinner!

• Showering in the evening: I’ve always been a morning showerer, but lately I’ve discovered the joys of showering in the evening: not only does it mean one less thing to do in the morning, but I also get to cross face washing off my evening to-do list as I can do this in the shower, win, win!

I’ve noticed that all my cheat codes are geared towards feeling like I have more time for sleep or rest.  It seems I have a strong drive to achieve both, just like the people who set their alarms two hours earlier than they need to get up. Turns out we’re not so different after all.

Do you have any cheat codes or small wins in your life?  What are they?  What need are they serving?