Here in the UK, the nights are drawing in.
Have you felt it too?
It’s more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. I’m eating more carbs than usual and crave sugar. I need some energy and those are ways the body can create that.
I don’t know how typical I am, but I’ve always been sensitive to daylight levels. As far back as 4 or 5 I can remember the walk to school and how lethargic I felt, shuffling along in the gloom.
I have a life by design, which I love. But it does mean that there’s fewer outside demands to force me to get going. There’s no boss expecting me at work. So I need to be able to motivate myself.
I have a few ways I tackle this time of the year. I hope they will be useful for you too.
A Light Alarm Clock
I use an alarm clock that has an inbuilt light that slowly gets brighter towards my wake-up time. There’s lots of different ones, but mine is a ‘Lumie Sunrise Alarm’. Setting the alarm for 06.30 means that the light begins to glow at 6am and is fully-bright by 06.30. It’s lovely – it’s like having sunshine flooding into the room. An added bonus is that it doesn’t wake my wife.
As belt and braces, I use a wake-up app on my phone called ‘Sleep Cycle’ – available on Android and iOS. It has a wake-up period typically set to 15 minutes and monitors sounds in the room to determine when you’re most awake. The alarm begins to sound at the point it senses you are most lightly sleeping during that window. Mine is set to 06.30 too so it’ll go off sometime between 06.15 and 06.30. And I put the phone across the room so I have to get out of bed!
I Get Exercise in Daylight
I don’t have a commute to work (well I do, but it’s 10 yards through the house to my office) so I go outside every morning. It is really important to get daylight into your eyes early in the morning to shift your circadian rhythm into daytime mode. The light alarm helps, but daylight – even on a grey, rainy morning – will be 10 times brighter than indoor lighting. I go out, I walk, I look up at the sky and deliberately get daylight into me.
In the summer I swim in the sea and in the winter I run.
I Get to Bed Earlier
In spite of all this, I do feel more tired in the darker months. Not surprising really, since our bodies are not that evolved away from hunter-gathering tribes that used to rise with the sun and go to bed with the sun. Because there was no artificial lighting, so no choice. It’s only in the last few hundred years that candles were commonly available and large-scale artificial lighting in factories and shops didn’t arrive until the end of the 1800’s.
I Eat Fresh Food
Eating salad and raw food in the summer is easy. In the winter, not so much. I make green juice most days. I swap pasta and rice for spinach, cabbage and other vegetables. I know, spag bol without the spag is a bit odd (and sincere apologies to those of Italian descent), but it does get the leafy greens into my system.
I Cut Myself Some Slack
This is probably the most important one and the one I often start with when coaching professional and business-owner clients. The modern way – since the Industrial Revolution anyway – is to operate at the same tempo all year round. That doesn’t allow for human beings naturally feeling slower and less dynamic in the winter months. In Europe especially, the light and temperature levels drop dramatically and that impacts us all to varying degrees.
I go slower in the winter. You can too, regardless of where you work. And the voice in your head that just laughed and mocked me is the main reason why you don’t already.
Many of these shifts can be done quietly, without having to get HR involved or even telling your boss. A few shifts, regularly made, will allow you to reduce your tempo and still be effective enough to not pop up on the radar.
And no, this isn’t slacking off or gaming the system. It’s a simple recognition that humans can’t go fast all year round. We weren’t designed to. And if we try, some of us will crash and get ill. That was how I discovered that I’m one of those people who can’t just keep going.
Forget the Christmas puds and card selections already appearing in the shops. Autumn has so much to look forward to, but it’ll take conscious changes to make the most of it.
And if you only take 1 thing from the whole article, let it be this: get outside in daylight every single day for 20 minutes at least, whatever the weather. Your body and mind will thank you for it.