Guy Reams (00:01.998)
This is day 173, 5 by 12 power hour.
Last night, I was relaxing in the backyard and I dozed off for a few minutes. I had this really strange dream. I was sitting cross-legged on the ground watching an alarm clock go off. When I woke up, my mind began spinning, searching for meaning behind the dream. Perhaps I was just crazy. But I came up with many ideas, most of them revolving around my ongoing struggle with scheduling.
calendaring and the constant pressure to get things done on time. However, after some deeper reflection, had a brainstorm. The idea stuck with me and I worked on it for the rest of evening. This morning I put that into practice and I'm going to explain what it was I came up with here. Try this at your own risk. I have a list of things I love to get done every day, but I rarely have time for all of
On a perfect day, everything slips neatly into place. I feel efficient. It seems like God or the universe is magnifying my efforts. On those days, I get everything done. I'm on fire. I'm in the zone. But most days, I fall short. I get bogged down, distracted, discouraged. I end up doing just the seven core habits that I maintain while everything else just falls apart, falls by the wayside.
So instead, what if I got everything I wanted done in just one hour? What if I could take everything, all the little things I like to do every day, and put them all into one hour and got them all done in just an hour? I started to do the math. What would that take? How many things do I want to accomplish? How much time could I do? So what's 60 minutes divided by 12?
Guy Reams (02:07.087)
So immediately upon waking, so here is the plan I came up with. Immediately upon waking, I would throw on some clothes, head downstairs, and be ready for the clock to strike 5 a.m. Then I could engage in what I'm now calling the hour of power. Well, to make this happen, I created a list of the 12 top things I want to do every day. Here's my sacred 12. Number one, meditation.
2. Scripture study or some other important reading material 3. Prayer 4. Stretching 5. Run 6. Core, like abdominal exercises, planks 7. Weight exercises, lifting some weights 8. Chest practice 9. My memory palace work
you know, memorizing long strings of numbers. Number 10, writing or brainstorming. Number 11, a daily planning session. And finally, number 12, reach out to someone that I do not know. So then I thought about each one of these and I thought, perhaps I can organize these in a logical sequence. So I put the calm stationary items first, the ones where I'm staying in one spot.
Then I put all the physical exercises together, and then I put the tasks that involve me using a device like my phone or a computer at the end. This way I could reduce transition time between the items to almost nothing.
So then after doing that, I decided, since there's 12, I get five minutes per task. So I said, now, just a side note. I know that I'm not going to get a proper weightlifting routine in five minutes. So you don't need to tell me that. And I know that there's no possible way that I will get a ton of value at a five minute stretching exercise or even a five minute run. But here's the important thing.
Guy Reams (04:22.369)
At least I did it. Now, I can decide to go on my normal weightlifting day. I can go do that. Or when I do a long run, I can go do that. But at least I've got something done. So that's the idea here. It's not perfection. It's just getting something done. So the next thing I did is I set up 13 alarms on my phone. The first alarm was at 4.50 AM. I timed myself. If I got out of bed right away,
and my clothes were already laid out, I can be in my clothes and downstairs and in the room where my treadmill is in less than 10 minutes.
I scheduled the remaining 12 alarms then in five minute increments. I made sure that when I set up the alarm on my phone that I used a mild single beep tone. So during my preparation, I ensured that I had everything I needed to do each task without having to search or set anything up. Because searching and setting things up would take more than five minutes. So I created a folder on my phone with the six applications that I would use during the session.
For example, I had a link to my chess.com account for practicing chess puzzles. I have a link to a meditation app so I can do that five minute meditation. I have an automatic number generator in there so I can generate automatic numbers to see if I can rememberize them and so forth and so on. With everything in place, I went to bed early, excited to see if I could actually pull this off. This morning I woke up three minutes before my alarm.
I got up, got dressed, and was downstairs waiting with two minutes to spare before the first alarm beeped. So sure enough, the first alarm beeped meditation. So I did that. I did a five minute meditation. And then I moved on when the next alarm sounded. One by one, I completed each of these five minute tasks. What surprised me was how effective the five minute windows actually felt.
Guy Reams (06:27.384)
I was able to dedicate focused effort and genuinely accomplish something in each segment. I ran at a really fast pace. I spent my stretching time focusing on a particular tight hamstring. I read a meaningful scripture that sparked some deep thought. During my writing brainstorm, I came up with three or four new blog ideas that I hadn't thought of before. I even reached out to someone I had never met.
And now, later on, I have a meeting scheduled with them sometime this week. All in all, it was a highly productive hour. Afterward, I grabbed a drink and promptly fell asleep on the couch for 40 minutes. well, at least I accomplished something today. No matter how poorly the rest of the day goes, I can rest assured knowing that I got the 12 most important personal things done. Well, maybe not the most important thing. I have other obligations, of course.
but at least those 12 boxes are checked. I'm going to try again tomorrow and see if I can find some more efficiency in the process. If I keep this up, I will return and report my findings. Increment incremental power may finally be mine.