http://www.msnbc.com/onair/nbc/nightlynews/sleep/default.asp
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/sentence_type_version_tenseless_theory_of_time.htm
Thursday, December 28, 2006
How to Keep Awake While Reading?
Keep Awake While Reading
by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
The rules for reading yourself to sleep are much
easier to follow than are the rules for keeping
awake while reading. Just get into bed in a
comfortable position, see that the light is
inadequate enough to cause a slight eyestrain,
choose something you don't care whether or not you
read, and unless you have insomnia, you will be
nodding soon enough. Those who are expert in
relaxing with a book don't have to wait for
nightfall or for bed. A comfortable chair in the
library will do at anytime.
Unfortunately, the rules for keeping awake do
not consist in doing just the opposite. It is
possible to keep awake while reading in a
comfortable chair or even in bed, and people have
been known to strain their eyes by reading late, in
light too dim. What kept the famous readers by
candlelight awake? One thing certainly -- that it
made a difference to them, a great difference,
whether or not they read the book they had in
hand.
Whether you read actively or passively, whether
you try to keep awake or not depends in large part
on your purpose in reading. There are many kinds of
reading and many sorts of things to read. You may
be seeking the same effortless pleasures of
relaxation that the movies and radio so readily
afford, or you may be making the effort to profit
by your reading. Let me roughly divide books into
those which compete with the movies and those with
which the movies cannot compete. They are the books
that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine
works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation
of human life. If they are serious works of
nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.
Everyone admits that if your aim in reading is
to profit -- to grow somehow in mind or spirit --
you have to keep awake. That means reading as
actively as possible. That means making an effort
-- for which you expect to be repaid.
Everyone admits that good books, fiction or
nonfiction, deserve such reading. To use a good
book as a sedative is conspicuous waste. To all
asleep or, what is the same, to let your mind
wander during the hours you planned to devote to
reading for profit is clearly to defeat your own
ends.
The sad fact is that many people who can
distinguish between pleasure and profit (and who
know which books give which) nevertheless fail to
carry out their reading plans. The reason is that
they do not know how to read actively, how to keep
their mind on what they are reading by making it do
the work without which no profit can be earned.
I have one simple rule for keeping awake while
reading. It underlies every other rule for
successful reading. You must ask questions while
you read -- questions which you yourself must try
to answer in the course of reading. Asking and
answering questions is what pays the dividends in
reading.
Any questions? No. The art of reading consists
in the habit of asking the right questions in the
right order. Let me illustrate this by giving you
the four main questions you must ask about any book
or, to make it more concrete, about any nonfiction
book.
- What is the book as a whole about?
Here you must try to discover the leading theme
of the books. And how the author develops this
theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into
its essential subordinate topics. - What in detail is being said, and
how? Here you must try to underline for
yourself -- with a pencil, perhaps, or mentally
if the book is borrowed -- the main ideas,
assertions, and arguments that constitute the
author's message. - Is it true, in whole or part? You
cannot answer this question until you have
answered the first two. You have to know what is
being said -- and to do that you must know how
it is being said, for you must be able to
penetrate through the author's language of his
mind -- before you can sit in judgment and
decide whether you agree or disagree. When you
do understand a point, however, you are
obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make
up your own mind. Knowing the author's is not
enough. - What of it? If the book has given you
information, and especially if it is true, you
must certainly ask about its significance. Why
does the author think it is important to know
these facts? If the book has not only informed
you, but also enlightened you, it is still
necessary to seek further enlightenment by
asking what follows next, what is further
implied or suggested.
These four questions summarize all the
obligations of a reader. They apply to anything
worth reading -- a book or an article or even an
advertisement for something you may be interested
in buying. Knowing these questions is, of course,
not enough. You must remember to ask them as you
read. The habit of doing that is the first mark of
an active reader. But more than that, you must be
able to answer them precisely and accurately. The
trained ability to do just that is the art of
reading.
This ability most of our college graduates lack
today, for the art of reading is no longer taught
in our "over-progressive" schools. But, college
graduate or not, you can learn to read for profit,
and profitably, if you will only try. It is
necessary, of course, to know more than these four
questions, because skill in answering them can be
acquired only through following all the rules of
the art of reading.
To answer the first question, for instance, you
must follow the rules for reading a book
analytically. A book is a complex structure, a
whole having many parts, which you must know how to
take apart. To answer the second question you must
follow the rules for reading a book
interpretatively. To reach the author's mind, you
must know how to see through his language, and this
means weighing his words, turning over his
sentences, and tying up his paragraphs. And to
answer the first two questions, you must follow the
rules of critical reading, which tell
you how to make a fair and dispassionate judgment
of the true and the false before you decide to
agree or disagree with the book's message.
To expound and explain all these rules in a
helpful way cannot be done here. What I have said,
however, makes the two main points. Unless you want
to keep awake while reading, there is no need to
develop skill or art in reading. But if you do want
to, you must do more than keep your eyes open and
your mind off your work, finances, basketball,
cooking and the children. You must keep your mind
on the book -- as actively as possible. To learn to
do that, you must keep asking questions and keep
trying to answer them.
One word more. People go to sleep over good
books not because they are unwilling to make the
effort, but because they don't know how to make it.
Good books are over your head. They wouldn't be
good for you if they weren't. And books that are
over your head weary you unless you reach up to
them and pull yourself up to their level. It isn't
stretching that tires you, but stretching
unsuccessfully because you lack the skill. To keep
on reading actively, you must have not only the
will to do so, but the skill -- the art that
enables you to elevate yourself by mastering what
at first right seems to be over your head.
The more you keep awake while reading, by
sustaining the activity of asking and answering
questions, the more exciting you will find the
process. Don't be afraid that it will become too
exciting.
Intellectual insomnia is still quite a long way
off.
How to become an early riser?
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.
Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.
It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.
The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.
Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.
If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.
I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.
After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.
Edit (5/31/05): Due to the (mysterious) popularity of this post, I’ve written a follow-up with some extra detail and clarifications: How to Become an Early Riser - Part II. And if you really want to take sleep to the next level, read about my experiences with Polyphasic Sleep, where you only sleep 2-3 hours a day by taking 20-minute naps every few hours, around the clock.
Edit (5/29/06): Be sure to read the related article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off.
Discuss this post in the Steve Pavlina forum.
If you find this site helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.
Related Posts
Best of StevePavlina.com
Polyphasic Sleep in USA Today
100%+ Traffic Increase
StevePavlina.com Podcast #001 - Intro to Personal Development
Do It Now
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II
What’s Your Motivation Threshold?
How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
8 Changes I Experienced After Giving Up TV
Ask Steve - Psychic Development
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…
… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.
Hmmm…
I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.
It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.
The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from midnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.
Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:
If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.
If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.
The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.
I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.
When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.
After a few days of using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.
A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.
I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.
So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.
Edit (5/31/05): Due to the (mysterious) popularity of this post, I’ve written a follow-up with some extra detail and clarifications: How to Become an Early Riser - Part II. And if you really want to take sleep to the next level, read about my experiences with Polyphasic Sleep, where you only sleep 2-3 hours a day by taking 20-minute naps every few hours, around the clock.
Edit (5/29/06): Be sure to read the related article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off.
Discuss this post in the Steve Pavlina forum.
If you find this site helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.
Related Posts
Best of StevePavlina.com
Polyphasic Sleep in USA Today
100%+ Traffic Increase
StevePavlina.com Podcast #001 - Intro to Personal Development
Do It Now
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II
What’s Your Motivation Threshold?
How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
8 Changes I Experienced After Giving Up TV
Ask Steve - Psychic Development
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