Staying up all night is bad for you and your business
Listen: almost nobody is getting the sleep they need these days. Fitbit’s groundbreaking sleep study found that their average user slept just 6 hours and 38 minutes every night. The CDC reports that a third of americans struggle to get the recommended amount of sleep.
When mental illness comes into play, the chances of getting a good night’s sleep are even worse — and as you might imagine, working from home doesn’t help either. A 2017 study by the International Labour Organisation found that most remote workers reported sleep interruptions as a result of work related stress.
Hey — I’m not judging anyone. Just the other night I stayed up until 1AM editing a piece of work that was due the next day. Most freelancers I know have pulled all nighters now and then to cope with the amount of work they’ve taken on. It’s normal, right?
Well, it might be the status quo, but forgoing sleep has some nasty side effects. It’s well known that sleep deprivation is linked to numerous physical and mental issues, including depression and anxiety.
The worst part is that even after you risk your health trying to meet a deadline, it won’t do your business any good.
Yes, you heard that right: staying up all night to finish a project is not a good business practice. The impact on your cognitive function alone is enough to have you making typos, misreading data, and turning semi-functional code into spaghetti. Now add the impact of the terrible mood you’re going to be in after forcing yourself to stay awake, with or without the aid of caffeine. Now consider that even after you’re finally finished at 4AM you have to be up in five hours to do it all over again. Or, you end up waking up at 1PM with an inbox full of urgent emails and a head full of regrets.
Poor sleep hygiene makes you look bad to your employers, too. They don’t like receiving a slew of emails in the middle of the night any more than you do. Time zones can only work in your favour for so long — at some point, your client is going to notice your bizarre, and unprofessional, sleep habits.
Time to Balance the Scales
The thing is, lack of sleep is part of a pervasive problem in freelance and remote work: a lack of work/life balance. Freelancers often report that they struggle to keep solid boundaries between their work and the rest of their time. Sometimes this means they isolate themselves from their friends. Sometimes it means their families feel neglected. Sometimes, it means that they miss out on precious hours of sleep.
The solution is simple: set some boundaries, and stick to them. If you can’t manage waking up at a set time each day, decide that you’re going to work for x amount of hours (five is a good minimum) and then stop. Or maybe you’re better suited to a rule like: ‘at 6PM I will stop working, no matter what’. You might find it helpful to write down your new schedule and sign off on it to add that extra layer of commitment.
You can expand on this idea, if a strict schedule appeals to you. You stop work at 6. You’re ready for bed by 9. You put down your phone at 9.30. Figure out what’s best for you, and stick to it.
Make Sleep Easy
For many freelancers with mental illness it isn’t always easy to keep a schedule. Maybe your medicine made you so sleepy you couldn’t start work until the afternoon. Maybe your anxiety is keeping you up all night. When things are bad, it’s tempting to put things off until you’re feeling better — but then the deadline hits.
The best way to avoid such situations is to proactively make work as stress free as you can. Do the majority of work as soon as you get it, and work on it anytime you feel better during the day. Don’t accept more work than you’re absolutely sure you’ll be able to handle. The less pressure is hanging over you, the less guilty you’ll feel when you head to bed at night.
Do Your Best
Whenever you can, try to stick to a schedule and maintain all the basic tenets of sleep hygiene. No phones, no loud noise, no bright lights. When you absolutely have to stay up, there are steps you can take to reduce the damage.
Utilities like f.lux can reduce the amount of blue light your laptop emits, for example. I also like to use sleepyti.me to figure out when I’m likely to wake up and adjust my work accordingly. When it’s finally time for bed, a white noise generator like rainymood can help you drift off.
In the physical realm, you can help yourself by keeping away from caffeine, working outside of the bedroom, and taking mindfulness breaks while you work.
Most importantly, be kind to yourself. At the end of the day (no pun intended) sleep hygiene is like any other habit. You can’t expect positive changes overnight, but that doesn’t mean you should be discouraged. Resting easy is a skill that you can learn and practice. Getting stressed over your sleeping pattern, or lack thereof, is only going to make that stress worse. Be patient, be adaptive, and soon you and your business will be reaping the benefits of a good night’s rest.
