Sleep is for the smart
Ever heard the phrase “sleep is for the weak” or something like it? Ironically our muscles repair during sleep making us stronger. How about mentally? Sleep gives us more willpower as well. On a less cheeky note, sleep is for people who like being smarter.
Recently I decided to stay up all night for an opportunity that seemed unlikely to come up again soon if ever. I know you like everyone has either done so or considered doing so, otherwise “all-nighter” wouldn’t be so widely known. It almost never is worth doing. I regretted skipping the sleep and so will you. There is an explanation for why we do this though, along with solutions.
First off, how much can be gained from an all nighter? If the goal is productivity, it needs to be high value work that can’t be done tomorrow. Is what you plan to do unable to be done another time and is it worth a day of productivity loss? Will you save your company from going bankrupt? Save a life? Almost certainly not. Your mind and body will end up forcing you to pay your sleep debt back in the coming days anyway. You can be stubborn and push through it, but your productivity will suffer after skipping sleep. I looked at my daily agendas and my all-nighter lost me over a days’ worth of productivity in the next couple days! If you want to remember what you learn, the answer is even more obvious. You will remember more by sleeping rather than working longer, so enjoy the sleep!
I bet most of you agree with this, but still skip sleep sometimes; thats ok, our brains simply have some irrationalities we can avoid. There are several factors that contribute to this. By only staying awake until 1 am some aspects of decision making degrade to the equivalent of a BAC of .05! Stay up later and you might as well be trying to plan at the bar… This level of impairment ensures that if you are making the decision to stay up all night part of the way through, all your decisions will be poorer than they should be. This is compounded with the general flaw in our decision making called hyperbolic discounting. When we reason our minds unconsciously weigh the reward right now with a higher cost as better than the same reward with a lower cost tomorrow. That funny video? Of course it feels like it will be worth watching now instead of sleeping, even if you could enjoy it tomorrow without losing sleep.
What can we do about it? Set your phone up to not tempt you with digital or in person opportunities to stay up. There are ways to automatically put your phone on do not disturb for Android and IOS. I use JuiceDefender to save my battery, but I also configured it to turn off data at night to remove distractions. I also reinforce my default response to go to sleep. All-nighters were already a rare occurrence for me, but the less the better. My bedtime routine is a calendar event with a reminder, making it a helpful habit. It may or may not help you, but making sleep an event on my calendar makes me take it more seriously. It is after all just as critical to show up for as even the most important meeting.
Something else to explore is counteracting the perceived higher present value of staying up by giving a higher cost to weigh against it. When choosing to skip sleep the mental narrative of “this will absolutely ruin the next few days” can help weigh against the appeal of staying awake. This isn’t foolproof, sometimes we need an immediate cost that is higher. Commitment devices are designed to help us be our best selves even when it is hard. Freakonomics is a great resource when it comes to hyperbolic discounting. Their explanations of behavioral economics are as fascinating as they are educational. I haven’t implemented something such as a $500 payment to a charity I dislike if I skip sleep, but if the issue reoccurs it is worth trying.
Another way around this is to sleep more efficiently and thus feel more rested and get to stay up. Who doesn’t like to have their cake and eat it too. Unfortunately this is easier said than done, and almost no one has the data to keep ourselves honest about this. Polyphasic sleep is fascinating but the costs are far higher than an all nighter if it doesn’t work, so I won’t be trying it until I collect the data to keep myself honest.
