Sleeping Through The Alarms of Life

Everyone chooses a philosophical camp about daylight savings time. Some people love it, others hate it. I will spare you the suffrage of rehashing the key points here. Suffice it to say that daylight savings time causes an adjustment in your sleep patters. On that, we must all agree.

This morning, my daughter slept through her alarm. She went to bed at 10 PM last night and planned to have her alarm go off at 4:30. Hit the snooze button until 5 AM, then get up and study for a makeup test at 7 am.

Like a lot of people over 45, I have a natural alarm that has developed. I wake up naturally at 5 AM every day, almost to the minute. daylight savings time has disrupted my pattern a bit. During the first week of daylight savings time, I was waking up at 6 am (my normal 5).  Now I am waking up at 5:30 as my internal clock moves into its natural rotation.

I was well into my morning routine of answering emails when I realized that it was 6:30 and I had not heard any movement from my daughter’s room. 6:30 was about 20 min before the time we needed to leave for school.  I woke her up and she was immediately struck with the stressful realization that she had to take a test that she was not fully prepared to take. It’s a feeling that we have all experienced.

In our personal lives and in our professional lives we learn about process. We plan or work and work our plan.  There is a lot of time pressure and time compression though out each of our lives. Responsibility is defined by how each of us complete the milestones and deliverables for our plans.

I guess my daughter learned an important lesson in responsibility and time management today. As a parent, you hate to see your child suffer when a good plan fails. But you also recognize that this lesson is an important and valuable experience. The pain of being late and unprepared is the teacher.

Interestingly enough, her test this morning was on Darwin and the concept of Natural Selection. You know, survival of the fittest. In so many ways, she will learn the hard way about what it takes to be successful. She will also learn that the ability to operate her alarm clock and get out of bed is fundamental to her success.

We are all a little too overscheduled in our lives. Any eventuality can throw us off track. And we all suffer from things slipping though the cracks or missed alarm clocks. The truest measure of our character is how we respond.