I am not very fond of the word “normal.” I think I started to question the word when I was in graduate school for social work. The word was brought up over and over by my clients or patients during sessions. As a social worker, I never used the word because, in my opinion, normal holds a certain definition and everything that falls outside of that definition is “abnormal.” Across the board, people did not like thinking or hearing that they were abnormal.
A few years ago, my family was at lunch and, for some reason, the conversation turned to deciding which family member was the most normal. I know, I know. Having that conversation seems a little bit odd and “abnormal” but, nevertheless, my family had it. It was a very light-hearted and fun conversation and my family often reminisces about it. The idea of being “normal” has sort of become a joke in my family.
That said, I think that there are certain expectations to fill in terms of falling somewhere in the vicinity of being normal. These expectations are set by family, friends and society, at large. Perhaps you have felt them too. For the purpose of this post, I am going to use sleeping habits as an example to illustrate the issues that I have with being normal (or abnormal, perhaps?).
My sleep habits are not as good as they should be. My former personal trainer just gave me a bigger incentive to sleep more, though, because he told me that people who sleep 7+ hours per night and eat well are more likely to be skinnier than people who eat well but do not get the extra sleep. That might just get me to close my eyes a little more often at night. However, the issue is that I am a perpetual night owl. I have been a night owl for most of my life. I have neither a strong desire nor need to go to sleep at the same exact time each day. As I work in Internet marketing, my business does not call for a set bedtime either. I have never missed a client meeting because of oversleeping. I have never missed a conference call due to my night owl tendency. Would I rather schedule an afternoon meeting over a morning meeting? Of course. However, would I turn down a morning
meeting with a client or a perspective client? Absolutely not.
I know, for a fact, that the Internet starts hopping at about midnight EST. I know this because my inbox starts filling up, my Facebook notifications increase and people start contacting me on Twitter. The night hours tend to be party time for folks who work in social media. Does this make us “abnormal?”
I cannot even count the number of times that I have heard from family and friends that I should try to get on a more normal schedule. Why would I do this? If I did this, I would miss out on a good 50% of prime networking time. I would be missing out on connections. I would have missed out on a huge project that I have going right now. If I shut down every night at the same time that people who work from 9am-5pm shut down, two things would happen:
- I would not be able to do my best work because I work most efficiently and diligently at night.
- The people with whom I work would not be around when I need them because they also do their best work at night and they, too, burn the midnight oil.
I am going to guess that a lot of people who are reading this are fellow entrepreneurs? What is your sleep schedule like? Have you ever felt pressure to fall into a “normal” schedule? I would like to hear from you about this!
