For most of us living in cities working indoors, we spend so much of our lives inside, inside a box of walls, ceiling, and floor, and underneath the glow of electric lights, such that we don’t even need to actually care about what’s going on outside.
And yet, there just seems to be this special power in somehow being connected to nature and feeling nature, somehow being part of it.
So how can we bring a bit of that into our everyday lives? So today I’m looking at the idea of how do we have a nature-based schedule? How do we bring nature into our schedule? How do we design our schedule so that we can maximize nature? It’s very simple ideas, but I just don’t see that many people doing it.
I mean, usually, you think OK, what time do I have to wake up? Well, when you have a certain time you want to work, and then you calculate backwards from that time that you need to be in work, and then you wake up then.
Maybe you have a time you naturally wake up.
But it’s usually based on the standard time, based on the hour as measured by standard time.
But what’s the most basic natural cycle of all? That is the day and night.
There just seems to be something good about waking up in a way that is connected with the sunrise.
Imagine that we time when we wake up to sort of be aware of the sun.
We can maybe in the summer give up on the sunrise wakeup, but now in the fall and winter, it’s possible to adjust our wakeup time so that we are waking up near the beginning of the day.
And I find this to be very helpful during the winter, when there’s so little light, and it can get a bit dismal just being under electric light with darkness for so long.
So during this the winter season, I want to maximize my time with sunlight.
So I’m now trying to wake up only no more than about 20 minutes after sunrise, so I can get as much of that daylight as I can.
And I’m pretty moderate when it comes to waking up early.
I like the idea of waking up even earlier, but I also like the evening, so that’s a constant balance for me.
So there’s something good about waking up with the sunrise or around it.
There’s a debate to be said both sides when it comes to before sunrise, after sunrise.
If you wake up after sunrise, then it’s almost like turning the lights on, like you let the lights get turned on, and then you wake up.
So it feels very comfortable and natural to me to wake up a little bit after sunrise.
Daylight comes in, then I wake up.
But on the other hand, if you wake up before sunrise, then you get to experience the sunrise.
And so as much as I don’t like waking up in the darkness, maybe it’s a bit more difficult, but maybe I’ll get used to it, but it seems like the ability to see the sunrise and watch that event every day would be a powerful thing to add to our day.
The other idea that I have for this being nature-based schedule is the weather.
Now, we like to have regular schedules, very convenient, and we can’t just reschedule everything because of the weather.
But if we have any flexibility in our schedules, why don’t we adjust our schedules to fit the weather? So here there was a stretch of several days of unseasonably warm, bright, sunny, pleasant weather, and that seems like a good time to be outside.
Anything that I can do that is outside, maybe anything that’s on my list that involves going somewhere outside rather than simply working at my desk: now is the time to do it.
Keep an eye on the weather, and we can adjust our schedules as much as possible, so that when the weather is good, we can be outside enjoying nature, enjoying the weather that’s there, enjoying the season, and really making the most of life by just appreciating the simple joys of a pleasant weather day.
And then on days when the weather is unpleasant, that would be a good time to focus on the indoor desk work or whatever we’re doing that doesn’t rely on the weather.
So by timing our daily schedule, being aware of the sunrise/sunset, the daylight and night cycle, and trying to time our daily schedule so that we make the most of the kind of light patterns we want, and by distributing our work as much as possible to allow outdoor time during the pleasant weather, these very simple things: it seems like using these very simple ideas can help us to live a life that is somehow more connected to nature.
Instead of just being inside the box, living on standard time like a factory, it’s more like we’re living in nature and building our life around those patterns that are already built into nature.
So there’s of course going to be limits to this, because we don’t want to wait to the last minute every day to decide what we’re going to do and make everything up to the weather.
So I wonder, what are the limits of this? And how else can we bring in this kind of connection to nature as part of our everyday life and work? So I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this topic.
#naturetime #naturalschedule #naturaltiming