Circadian Cadence: How Much of My Life Have I Postponed?

Some mornings, I wake up already behind. The day hasn’t begun, but I feel the weight of all the hours I’ve wasted before it. Plans were made by the person I was last night—the one who believed I would wake up different. But I wake up the same. And the war begins again.

Discipline isn’t about control. It’s about survival.

I think of the horologium—the ancient Roman sundial—its shadow creeping inexorably across the stone, marking time with silent precision. The Romans, those masters of order and empire, knew that to ignore time was to invite collapse. And yet, how often do I do the same? How often do I allow the shadows of procrastination and distraction to lengthen unchecked, convincing myself that time—like mercy—will be granted again?

We imagine discipline as a cage. In reality, it is scaffolding. The irony is that we resist structure, but without it, we drift—slowly at first, then all at once.

Consider the vespertine hours—those twilight moments when the world hovers between day and night. A time meant for reflection, for recalibration. And yet, how often do I squander it in the glow of a screen, scrolling through someone else’s life while neglecting my own? To misuse these hours is to disrupt my own circadian cadence, that ancient rhythm woven into the body’s fabric. The consequences are subtle at first—a restless mind, an unquiet soul—but they accumulate like dust in an abandoned house.

And then there is the matter of sustenance. The body, that tabernacle of flesh and bone, does not merely need food, but nourishment. The agora of ancient Athens was more than a marketplace—it was a gathering of minds, where food and philosophy were exchanged in equal measure. To eat well is not just to feed the body, but to honour it. And yet, how often do I reach for what is easy instead of what is necessary?

Work, too, demands its due. To procrastinate is to commit a kind of temporal larceny, stealing from the future to indulge the present. The monks of medieval scriptoriums copied texts by candlelight, knowing that to delay was to risk losing something precious—not just time, but the very essence of the task itself. Yet I tell myself tomorrow will be better, as if discipline is something that arrives, rather than something that is built.

And what of ambition? To dream without action is to become a littérateur of the mind, spinning tales that never see the light of day. I think of Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing and his colleagues cracked the Enigma code not by waiting for the perfect moment, but by creating it—through repetition, through persistence, through the quiet, unglamorous labour of showing up.

The battle against time is not won in grand gestures. It is fought in the quiet moments—when no one is watching, when the choice is mine alone.

To live with discipline is to reject the illusion that tomorrow is promised. It is to see time not as an enemy, but as an accomplice.

And in this quiet rebellion, I find not just discipline, but a kind of grace—a way of living that is both deliberate and free.

Fin.