86% Grind, Still Not Much Sleep Years Later

Years ago, Houston rapper-turned-pimp Mike Jones bragged on his record about how much he worked in between moments when he wasn’t repeating his name in every few bars (Who? Mike Jones!). Truthfully, he really wasn’t that great of a rapper but he was an amazing promoter by virtue of how he built the buzz for that 2005 album Who Is Mike Jones? to go platinum and for a brief moment, he put the city of Houston and the chopped and screwed sound on the national radar. I know DJ Screw is the originator and Lil’ Flip spit some pretty hot bars a few years earlier, but combined with Swishahouse icon Michael Watts, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, Slim Thug, Magno, Archie Lee, and others, Jones found his way into cars that otherwise would have kept a different style in their CD players.

Keep in mind this is 2005:  Rick Ross and Young Jeezy were working on debut albums, T.I. had reached his mainstream peak, G-Unit moved south to Nashville with Young Buck’s Straight Outta Cashville, Kanye West was talking about gold diggers before marrying one and introducing us to the ways John Legend got lifted, and Game was telling us about his dreams. Bulky CD cases were strewn all over the back seats – and for the fortunate, XM or Sirius satellite radio was a $35 subscription away.

Other than his name, one thing that Jones frequently repeated said that oddly sticks so many years later is “90% Grind, 10% Sleep”. If he worked every day as he proclaimed, then sleep was quite the afterthought as in he likely averaged 151 awake hours per week. Clearly that was quite the overstatement – a man would wear out very quickly if he tried to sustain a pace that only allowed for 2.5 hours   of sleep. Trust me:  I did that for a nearly five-year period. While all of that working (and saving, don’t forget) paid off two cars, a wedding, my student loan, and even a nice down payment on our house, I honestly wouldn’t do it again because I missed out on so much of my twenties and early thirties.

Enter the summer of 2016. I’ve been grinding 86% of the week – and I’m not talking about anything else away from the job. I didn’t expect to still be working six nights per week at this point in my life, but here we are punching the clock and getting assaulted by Uncle Sam with help from Chase and Toyota among other creditors every other Friday. I’m more tired and perhaps a bit more wary of my own time; with a precocious nineteen-month-old, the last thing I want to do is waste time by being counterproductive. It also means I should have learned how to monetize my time – HUGE difference from managing my time. During the course of a given day other than Mondays, I can micromanage my day from start to finish to the minute all in the names of efficiency and maximum productivity including my 5.5 hour nap. This lifestyle isn’t exactly healthy, yet it is the one I lead today. As for Mondays, I’m sleeping as the rest of the world does battle in rush hour and office politics jousting for position in drive-thru windows and simultaneously hating their lives.

The sleep part comes in the morning and I doubt there will be much of it before more fires have to be put out. I need to shake the hands of the people who invented darkened curtains and offer the central heat and air technician a couple of burgers and beers for their hard work in aiding my day of rest.