LifeHackMom.com

I went to college with a genius guy, Patrick. He was an overachiever who had scheduled his classes to the max. In order to get his classwork done he trained himself to require less sleep. At the end of one semester he was down to a mere 4 hours of sleep per night and was doing great. He was getting his work done, seemed completely sane, and actually lost a bit of weight. He was looking healthier and seemed sharper.

He did his 4 hours of sleep in one lump per night. I know there is a sleep hack out there (polyphasic sleep) that advocates taking several small powernaps at keypoints during the day. It is quite a bit of training, but I’ve heard the results are successful. I don’t think I have the discipline to do this, nor would my lifestyle support it, but it is intriguing.

In the summer I have no problem getting up early, as long as the sun is up. In the winter, not so much. It is too dark and cold (we’re in Buffalo after all) and it is hard to get out of bed.

I would love to hear some strategies that people have used to make use of hours that we normally spend sleeping. I seem to require 7 hours per night, but would love to shave an hour or two off of this.

The drug of choice for most working parents. How could we cope through the day without our caffeine?

Having so much to do we often have to stay up late at night. When the kids go to sleep and the husband winds down, the magic hour begins. No kids to interrupt. No phones to interrupt. No husband to interrupt. Email is quieter as most of my clients are offline (although there are two right now who still insist on emailing me at 11:30 at night, then wanting to know why I haven’t responded yet at 8:30 a.m. the next morning).

But… I’m tired too… I’ve been up since 6 a.m. and my nice warm bed with my nice warm husband in it is beckoning.

But… my day starts early tomorrow with a 6:45 a.m. BNI meeting, then followed by a Membership Committee meeting, then a committee meeting at UB, then after all those meetings only about 45 minutes left to do any actual work before I have to come home to get my kids off the bus. I hate meetings, as nothing productive ever seems to happen.

Tonight is it. Time for Caffeine! It will give me at least an hour and a half of productive work before I crash and burn.

How much caffeine is in a cup of coffee?

A typical cup of coffee has about 85 mg, if you brewed it yourself and don’t make it too strong. I heard somewhere that Starbucks has about 3 times the amount of caffeine — so about 210 mg.

Tea usually contains less caffeine — on average about 27 mg per cup, but that ranges again by how strong you make it, how long you brew it.

Surprisingly — chocolate seems to have more caffeine. A cup of hot chocolate can contain over 150 mg.

Colas usually are fairly low, like tea. They contain on average about 40 mg of caffeine per can.

Here is some more information: http://www.abc.net.au/quantum/poison/caffeine/caffeine.htm

Some of us have way too much to do.

We have to balance kids, husbands, taking care of aging parents, our full-time careers. Worries about gaining weight. Worries about having a clean and organized home. Worries about being a good employee or employer. Worries about giving our children a nurturing loving educational environment and not turning them into serial killers. Worries about keeping the spice in our marriages or relationships. Not sleeping well because we worried that we didn’t send that last email, check our kids homework, sign that permission slip…

What’s for dinner tonight? Is the laundry done? How am I going to wing it on my presentation tomorrow that I didn’t have any time to prepare for because …well… life… just got in the way.

This is not your mother’s blog. The tools and tips that Mom used don’t cut it in our digital world of Blackberries, email, cellphones, instant gratification and immediate access. At no other time in history have we been expected to do so much. 75 - 100 projects at work, let only our home responsibilities are commonplace. How do we get it all done?

We have life hacks for managers, life hacks for Stay-at-Home Moms, life hacks for IT people. But what about the busiest most stressed out — life hacks for the full-time working parent? Hopefully this site will be a place to share some of our Life Hacks that can cross into all of these areas.

Read on and share your secrets — we need them for our sanity!