Lethargic Prince

A 'Successful Life' calls for work. Work in the early mornings before the sun has even risen. Work late at night when the world should be quiet. Any trashy online article about success lists things such as perseverance and taking action.

Ever since I was little, I was given the number 8. A magical value for the amount of sleep which will allow you to perform at your best. Every night since, I have tried, so very hard, to achieve this number and beyond. Sometimes I get home late, and find myself in my bed drifting off to sleep minutes past 1am. I comfort myself. I need only wake up at 9am. I must have more than 8 hours of sleep.

Recommended Sleep Chart
- National Sleep Foundation

This number is addictive. A cage. Only when my anxiety is drowned out with drink or physical exertion do I have the capacity to perform with less than 8 hours sleep. Only when the real world drifts away can I wake up feeling refreshed, not knowing the time of day.

Or maybe it is the excitement. Days go by and nothing is really invigorating. Sure I go out, have fun with my friends, but fun is not something which needs to be earned. I can sleep all day and still have 'fun'. I can still subsist, nothing really cares if I'm well rested, or lethargic. Only I can care.

And so here in lies a problem.

Excitement gets get me out of bed, regardless of my 8 hour addiction. Entrepreneurship should be exciting, it is exciting. And yet, I just can't do it. It is as if, what excites me in the morning is completely different to what excites me during the day.

I have tried countless measures. Left my windows open, set really loud alarms, gotten my parents to smash on my door and yet nothing works. Nothing works because, in that moment, I don't want anything to work. In the early morning I am a different person.

So now there is a war. Night Sam v Day Sam. A terrible battle between the Lethargic Prince and the Ambitious Duke. There has to be a way to resolve this fight without a costly war? And there is.

The Duke has something the Prince never acquired. A capacity for ideation, research and creativity. What would a minimum viable product for my terrible sleeping habits look like? A thought? A process? A physical object?

After much deliberation, research and ideation, I have found something wonderful. And I'm not the first.

It's cheap, sustainable, actionable and solves the problem in a novel way. I bring you, the Jolt. The idea has been around for a while. As soon as you gain consciousness in the morning, you spam. Yes that's right, contract all of your muscles at once, in one sharp motion. Suddenly your mind clears, and you can more easily get out of bed.

This Jolt hijacks a neural pathway which is also the case of a terrible mental illness some people face. Known as a hypnic jerk, affected individuals feel a falling sensation as soon as they are about to sleep, due to mixed up muscle single interpretations. This hypnic jerk is enough to keep someone wide awake for ridiculous amounts of time.

Scientists believe that the hypnic jerk could be "an archaic reflex to the brain's misinterpretation of muscle relaxation with the onset of sleep as a signal that a sleeping primate is falling out of a tree. The reflex may also have had selective value by having the sleeper readjust or review his or her sleeping position in a nest or on a branch in order to assure that a fall did not occur."

View from CN Tower, Toronto
Photographer - Reuschp

In analogy, the Lethargic Prince is really scared of heights, and any tall place will make him weak. In the early morning while he walks along the castle walls, have an assassin push him close to the edge and demand he surrenders. The Ambitious Duke will take control, and you will have you kingdom back.

I have only just discovered this wonderful wake-up routine, and I hope to use it now and into the future. I will continue to fully develop my strategy and never wake up at 12pm ever again.