March 2026: A Fixed Bedtime, Two Inbox Checks, One Tool to Ship
February felt dense: lots of ideas, lots of output, slightly scattered. The February scorecard showed a clear split. The commitments that held were single decisions or had a visible daily record; the two that drifted, sleep and the inbox, needed a fresh choice at the moment I was most tired or most distracted. March is about removing those choices.
What I’m carrying forward
Daily writing. The daily writing streak is still unbroken. I didn’t start it expecting it to reach March. I wrote about what the habit has changed in Fifty-Five Days In; nothing about the rhythm changes this month.
No-tech Sundays, once a month. The two in February convinced me they’re worth it. The benefit to family time is obvious. The benefit to my own clarity is subtler but real: Monday feels different after a day fully off. The rule stays at one a month, with extras as a bonus; February’s two showed that monthly holds and anything more is a win. The first one is a fair picture of what the day involves.
Focused client work. The Fabric migration is at a critical phase: data validation, performance tuning, stakeholder sign-off. This isn’t the time to take on a second thread. The three filters I use before saying yes stay in force.
What I’m changing
A fixed sleep schedule
This is the commitment I kept failing. I averaged 6.5 hours in February against a target of seven, and the reason was structural: without a fixed point, bedtime gets set by when work feels done, and work never feels done.
So starting tonight it’s a rule: in bed at 10:30 PM, phone in the drawer, alarm at 7 AM. Not flexible on weekdays. Not “just one more thing to finish” on Sunday nights.
The evidence on sleep isn’t in dispute. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and Sleep Research Society consensus recommends seven or more hours a night for adults aged 18 to 60. Six and a half is still under the line: the CDC links regularly sleeping under seven hours to higher rates of chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure (CDC MMWR, 2016). I’ve known all of this for years.
What I haven’t done is treat sleep as a meeting I can’t reschedule rather than a buffer I can compress when work expands. A fixed bedtime moves the decision to one moment, when I set the rule, instead of making it again at 11 PM with a half-finished task open.
Email as a scheduled task
First check at 9 AM. Second check at 1 PM. After that, nothing until the next morning.
February’s slip on focus came from treating the inbox as the agenda: whatever arrived first got my best hours. Two fixed checks mean the morning starts with work I chose.
I’ve tried versions of this before and slid back. The difference this time is that I’m planning for the slide-back. Miss a day, reset the next morning.
Afternoons for lighter work
The 2 to 3 PM window is consistently my lowest-output hour, and I’ve been forcing demanding work through it. In March that slot gets time-blocked for lower-energy tasks instead of fighting my own energy curve: admin, reviewing rather than writing, and replying to whatever the 1 PM inbox check turned up. Demanding work moves to the morning, after the 9 AM check, which is where the inbox rule frees up the time anyway.
Side project: ship the minimum version
My small data quality tool has been “almost done” for three months. February added maybe three commits. Three commits a month keeps the idea alive and nothing more, and it’s a sign I’ve let the scope creep.
The March goal: ship the thing I actually built, not the thing I wish I’d built. Done and imperfect beats not-done and theoretically perfect.
What March is about
March is about finishing what matters, not adding more. February surfaced ideas I want to explore, posts I want to write, patterns I want to build. That was February’s job: generating material. March’s job is narrowing.
| Area | March commitment |
|---|---|
| Sleep | Weeknights: bed at 10:30 PM, alarm at 7 AM, phone in the drawer |
| Two checks: 9 AM and 1 PM | |
| Client work | One project, the Fabric migration, done well |
| Afternoons | 2 to 3 PM blocked for lower-energy work |
| Side project | Ship the minimum version I’ve already built |
| Family | One no-tech Sunday, protected |
| Writing | A post every day |
That’s the whole list.
The longer game
I’ve been thinking about what I want the rest of 2026 to look like.
More work that combines technical depth with helping teams, not just one or the other. More writing. At some point, a talk or workshop that pulls together what I’ve been building in my Fabric and AI work.
Less context-switching. Fewer commitments that sound good but scatter focus.
This is directional, not a plan. March is the test case: if one project done well, a shipped side project and fixed rules for sleep and email leave me with more focus at the end of the month, that’s the shape I’ll keep building the year around. If they don’t, the direction needs rethinking before I add anything to it.
One more thing
Nearly two months of daily writing is long enough to no longer feel like a streak and short enough to not yet be a practice. Somewhere in the next few months it tips over. I’ll keep going until it does. Here’s to March.