You freelancers / work at home / service people will LOVE this.

Ok, I’m about a month into this sleeping thing I mentioned in an earlier post, and it has been fantastic. It’s made me look at insomnia and the like a little differently. At least in my case.

Quick recap: I had horrible insomnia, which started two years ago when I began “getting up earlier” to be more businesslike in my business.  At least I thought it was more businesslike. A month ago, I nixed that, and followed my heart/body in wanting to stay up until 2-3am, and sleeping until 10-11am.

I’ll fall short of saying “my experience is everyone’s”, but I am also convinced that if one goes to bed / gets up when they really want to, they won’t be as apt to have sleeping problems. I know it worked for me, and I had AWFUL sleeping problems. Because I’d turn to the clock and say “@#$%, I gotta get up in 5 hours. PLEASE fall asleep”.

But now, I look at the clock and say “it doesn’t matter” (because it truly doesn’t), and I fall asleep. Plus, I go to sleep whenever I am truly tired enough to sleep, not when I have to. This is a huge revelation for me - I feel like I hit the lottery.

Now I understand that this is not useful to millions of you out there. You have your life setup where you have to get up at 5am or whatnot to get to work, etc etc. But this is useful to millions of others who, like me, kind of have options. I work for myself - work starts when I get here. As long as I can realistically converse with other people during “some” normal business hours, it makes zero difference if I’m here at 8:30am, or 11am. Let me repeat - it makes no difference.

If you have insomnia, yet can realistically set your life up to follow whatever your body’s natural sleep pattern is, I strongly encourage you to give it a try.

I sometimes hear little motivational quotes or the like that make a lot of sense to me. I just read this one a few minutes ago. It was in the sports section of the NY Times - Joe Namath left a note for Mark Sanchez (the current NY Jet QB), which had this little nugget on it:

Focus on your priorities. If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.

I really liked that, and wanted to share it. Because I’m guilty of chasing like… nine rabbits sometimes.

I get asked about this all the time - people want to start a business, but they don’t know what type of business to start.

Here’s what I would do… in the next six months, make it a goal to make some money. Not start an official business, but just make some money. In other words, figure out how you can make some money doing/selling/offering something.

It doesn’t have to be a lot of money or anything profound, either - it can be setting up a table at the local flea market or doing computer repair on Saturdays. Use your talents, use your imagination; but go make a few bucks some way, some how.

Then, once you do that, try and make some more money. Maybe change directions. Maybe improve on what you did. Maybe do something different. Whatever. But go make some more.

And go where that leads you.

I like to think I’ve been successful in my life. And in looking back, I think the greatest periods of success that I have enjoyed - whether working for others or working for myself - is when I was true to myself in terms of sleep. Let me explain:

There were three jobs in my life that I really thrived at (and these were the jobs I left on good terms, too). The three jobs were retail manager/buyer (twice), and computer tech support. I loved those jobs, did excellent work, and was loved in return. Every other job I had I either got fired, or quit in a huff. And I didn’t like any of those lesser jobs either.

I’ve also owned three businesses in my life - a direct mail advertising business in the 90’s (failed), a computer consulting business in the 90’s (failed), and what I do now (success - going on a decade of success, in fact.) And not only did I fail at the first two, I really didn’t enjoy them all that much either.

Now, here’s the funny thing: I’ve noticed a direct correlation in all of my successes. It’s sleep. Or, more precisely, the ability to work late and sleep in.

No two ways around it - I’m an evening/night guy. I am at my best in the afternoon/evening. The retail jobs I had, since I was the boss, I worked the afternoon-close shift. Tech support was 4-midnight.

My first two businesses were straight “in-person” B2B, meaning I had to rise early. I failed. But my current business is at home, through the Internet - I work late and sleep in.

I noticed in my last two years of business, I changed a little - I wasn’t enjoying it quite as much. Wanna know why? Because I was making an effort to “get up earlier”. Why, I don’t know - maybe I felt it was more “business-like” to be up at 8am. No coincidence that I started having trouble sleeping two years ago.

It took me until right now (well, yesterday, really) to make this connection. Because two weeks ago, I started going to bed when I felt like it (2-3am usually) and sleeping until I naturally woke up (9-10am). In other words, I stopped fighting my body - ever since I was a kid, I was like this. I’m just naturally a Night Owl. And I can’t be successful or truly happy unless I remain true to that. I realize that now.

It’s only been two weeks, but I’m ecstatic about this - I feel one million times better. And I have zero trouble sleeping (and need no help), because I don’t give a @#$% what time I wake up.

To me, this is one of the keys to success - be true to yourself. I realize it’s not always 100% practical (moms everywhere will disagree with me, and even I sometimes have to schedule something early), but going against your nature is going to be more of a hindrance than a help.