There is only one link between a photo that I took of Prague two years ago and an apparent misspelling of "America" – Franz Kafka. I could provide you a link to his Wikipedia page, but it’s getting late, so I expect you to Google it yourself (and I’m sure "to google" has entered the Oxford English dictionary).

I have nothing worth writing about, so I’ve resorted to writing GCSE-style book reviews. I’ve been trying to do something more productive than read the free newspapers during my daily commute. I used to be a proud Times reader when I was a student. Back then, it only cost 20p and I had spare hours every day to complete the crossword and Su Doku(s). Now we are in a recession and my free time is spent auditing and writing pointless blog posts.

I discovered Kafka in a very literal sense when I walked past his statue in a Prague museum. Then I bought his book. That brings me back to today. I’m substituting fiction for free newspapers but I feel that I should finish reading all the books that I already own.  One of these books is Franz Kafka’s America.

The Review

Karl Rossman emigrates to America after being kicked out by his parents for sleeping with the servant and, after defending the honour of the stoker, meets (unknown to Karl at the time) his uncle, who is a senator and guides Karl on his first tenative steps in America, however, he is under his uncle’s authority, though it is only an ostensible authority and not an actual one, and gets kicked out again after disobeying it, Karl wanders from job to job while always falling under new authority figures and never actually escapes, and never settles into a career, eventually, he joins the Oklahoma Theatre but a promising start under his uncle has turned into a random and nightmarish wandering through life – pointless.

If you had bothered to read Kafka’s Wikipedia page then you would have know that he writes in very long sentences with the punchline at the end. 

On Wednesday I dragged myself to Home Church feeling sorry for myself. I was so pre-occupied in my thoughts that I had missed my stop.

A couple of weeks ago out church sent a small group out to Rwanda to support Stephen. Stephen was an orphan victim from the Rwandan genocide. He now runs a church and various other projects for the orphans and widows. I can’t do his story any justice at all, so I will refer you to his website.

Abigail talked about her time in Rwanda. It had profoundly affected her and she talked about it for two gripping hours. It was horrible. It put my problems firmly into perspective

What got my was the story about the women who worked for two weeks to produce a sewn pot that creates a profit of £2.

• That barely covers a coffee and a newspaper in Britain.
• In audit £1000 is de minimis, which means that it is so trivial that it is not worth caring about.
• Poverty is defined as an annual income below £5,842 (for a single adult in the UK).
• Trillion dollar bailout for banks are the norm.

We can’t forget the hope. Stephen is doing tremendous work:

• Orphans and widows project – helping 160 people
• Tailoring project – work for 250 people
• Soccer team
• Church planting

Rwandan Kids

Not a moment too soon!

For the record, I woke up within 30 seconds of the alarm 27 out of 34 times. It was pretty exhausting at the start but it got easier towards the end. Some days I woke up before the alarm. My body clock adjusted to expect 8 (ish) hours of sleep a night.

Evolution of the Sleep Challenge Spreadsheet:
Written by Andrew

Week 1 – Wanting a way to easily streamline the updating and cross-monitoring, we set up this online shared spreadsheet system.
Week 2 – To streamline efforts and increase success chance, we ended up making our new habits identical. Same goals and targets.
Week 3 – To increase motivation, we implemented a scoring system against each other. Winner gets food/money/clean-clothes.
Week 4 – We combined the scoring system to a joint scoring system. We only get a joint point if we BOTH wake up within thirty seconds, but no points at all if either one of us fails to wake up in time. Thus we will put more importance on encouraging the other person to wake up, and also increased motivation from not wanting to make the team fail.

Some pointers

• Nothing like public shame as a motivation.
• Andrew and I changed from a competitive to a co-operative scoring system halfway though. However, this was less of a motivation. Also, there was an incentive to be dishonest so that the other side wasn’t let down.
• Ultimately, we would only deceive ourselves if we cheated on the sleep challenge.
• I immediately went back to the pattern of snoozing when the challenge ended.

Where now?

Some other challenge ideas:

• 3 MITs – complete the three "most important tasks" everyday.
• Zero information diet
• Zero fat diet
• The Batman Challenge – one act of vigilante justice everyday
• 100 Mile Challenge – 100 miles of running a month
• Punctuality Challenge – Don’t be late, ever.