STEP 2

It all starts with a good night’s sleep!!! Sleep gives your brain and your body the time to rest and rejuvenate. Sleep is essential for optimal performance: mental and physical.

Throughout the first 2 weeks of The LEFTOVER SPOONS CHALLENGE, you will log your sleep using the Weekly SLEEP Journal worksheet.

You will start each week on Sunday night by taking note of the time at which you went to bed.

Then, it is best to answer each of the following questions early mornings, soon after getting out of bed:

1. The approximate time at which you fell asleep (don’t worry too much about giving an exact time, here, as this might interfere with your sleep),

2. The time at which you awakened, and

3. The time at which you got out of bed.

In the NOTES section, you will document the number of times you woke up during the night and how long it took you, approximately, each time, to fall back asleep. The NOTES section can also be used to write about the quality of your sleep. Did you have any trouble falling asleep or falling back asleep? Did you wake up feeling tired and sleepy, or rather feeling truly refreshed after a full night sleep?

If you don’t think you will be able to work well from memory, I suggest you keep a memo pad and pencil on your night stand.

Every day, throughout the day, you will also tune in to how you’re functioning both mentally and physically. Then, at the end of each day, you will ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you feel fully functional throughout the day?

• A bit diminished?

• Diminished? Or…

• Mostly dysfunctional?

You will give yourself a score of four (4) if you felt fully functional throughout the day. You will give yourself a score of three (3) if you felt a bit diminished. You will give yourself a score of two (2) if you felt clearly diminished. And you will give yourself a score of one (1) if you felt mostly dysfunctional all through the day.

You can refer back to the fatigue assessment questionnaires from STEP 1, if you want to be more thorough and precise about it all. Or you can simply use the following guidelines to score yourself with regards to your daily mental and physical functioning:

• When you’re a bit diminished, you usually start to feel a little slowed down, a little sluggish.

• When you’re clearly diminished, your productivity clearly starts to suffer: every task starts taking you much more time than normal to complete.

• When you get to the point of being completely dysfunctional, you’re unable to take care of all of your daily responsibilities. You don’t have a choice but to stop to recharge, because you’re now completely bogged down, completely frozen in place.

Before moving on to STEP 3, I suggest you log your sleep for at least one full week to get yourself into the swing of things!!!

Also, I suggest that you try to find some time during WEEK 1 to familiarize yourself with the MENTAL SPOONS Equivalents Chart and the PHYSICAL SPOONS Equivalents Chart, as this will help get you ready for next week…