I’ve always went back-and-forth with the idea of pursuing a night MBA or take online classes for a Masters. There is a feeling of “if I don’t take it its wasted opportunity”. On the other hand, I remember I didn’t take too fondly to class and in my college days I did most of my learning by reading the book and doing practice problems myself.

About 5 months ago, per the recommendation of my manager and good reviews from co-workers, I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie course. It was suppose to deal mostly with public speaking, communication, and stress management. It was a long 3-4 hour weekly session and I ended up regretting I signed up, mostly because I was so tired after work already and the class ate up all my free time for that day. While there were some value to the class, which was mainly a lot of practice time and positive feedback (Scott Adams agrees), it was mainly a repeat of concepts that I’ve read before in Carnegie’s books and in some cases have applied already.

I don’t regret taking the class because it confirmed for me that I hate school. I have a short attention span and do better reading and trying things out by myself and in my own time. I’m no longer considering taking schooling for now (and won’t be unless if my interest in that topic of study becomes so great school would become enjoyable…)

From the Dale Carnegie class experience I realize I can learn the equivalent as I could taking a class or course from someone else.

• I can read faster and digest concepts better reading than listening to someone present it in most cases (unless if the speaker is really good)
• Flexible time means I can engage the material when I am in a learning and focused mood (usually at night)
• The wealth of connections and information through the web now days can help replicate the connections available through schools somewhat, if you are resourceful

Typical disadvantages to self-learning, such as not having Q&A time with profs or working them for future connections don’t apply to me because I never took advantage of them anyways.

The only challenge is possibly maintaining motivation and respect for self-imposed deadlines.

What the heck does all this have to do with sleep?

Well, I figure I would drop the idea of spending time on more schooling and work on getting more sleep first. There is a bunch of advantages to getting more sleep, such as:

• list some advantages

The problem I’ve been having with getting more sleep is dropping what I’m doing and getting to bed… some how I know sleep is important but it often takes a lot lower priority than my interests and friends. Sleep school is to treat my sleep like it is my advanced degree and force myself to monitor and adhere to it.

I’m betting that me getting more sleep (using the time I would have spent on school) will produce more value and benefit to my life than going to school and getting a higher degree. Sound stupid? It probably is but for me it makes logical sense and is alignment with what I want to do, which means that it will most likely succeed (meaning I’ll carry out… we’ll see if the results of my hypothesis is correct)

Pt. 2 will be the practical application plan

I’ve always loved to read about and think about different lifehacks and ideas to improve quality of life. At a certain point I realized that I was reading way too much and applying waaaay too little. Here I will start to experiment and put different ideas into use in my daily routine.