UNITED STATES—They say it all the time, and as I get older, I have to agree, sleep is so important to our lives. Show me a person who gets eight hours of sleep, seven hours of sleep, six hours of sleep, hell, five hours of sleep seems pretty difficult at times.
I tell this to people all the time, I can function on minimal amounts of sleep, but I will be cranky as hell in the beginning. It might take me an hour or two to get into my groove and fully wake up and get my fuel running on all cylinders. Something I learned while in college as an undergraduate is that I have periods where I am super sleepy. I’ve pulled all-nighters plenty of times. Yes, I was literally up for 24 hours. I think the longest I’ve ever gone without any sleep is 40 hours. Don’t even ask me how I made it happen, but it happened on my birthday of all days. I worked 12 hours, then I had some studying to do, and then I celebrated.
The crazy thing is the moment I hit the pillow I crashed in a way that I never imagined that I would sleep almost 12 hours. Oh, if I sleep for 12 hours you should be concerned because that means I’m exhausted and I have been burnt out. Yes, it is recommended that we should get eight hours of sleep but imagine you’re working 12-to-16-hour workdays, that is not always feasible. Yes, I would make that argument that eight hours is hard to obtain on a nightly basis with a hectic work schedule.
For me between midnight and 2 a.m. is a dangerous zone. That is when I am at my peak tired. If I manage to stay up after that two-hour time frame, the night is over for me. I cannot sleep and no matter how hard I try, I might not actually fall to literal sleep until 4:30 or 5 in the morning, only to be back awake by 6:30 a.m. or 7 a.m. at the latest.
Well, considering I don’t sleep well to begin with, I’ve started to listen to my body a lot more. When I feel my eyes are trying to close and I’m yawning excessively, that means it is time for me to checkout. I used to fight that all the time, I no longer do that. Just the other day, after getting home from work, I grabbed something to eat, turned on the TV and within 90 minutes I was out cold. Normally I would have tried to stay awake, but I have stopped doing that.
When my body tells me to go to sleep, I literally go to sleep and I think my body greatly appreciates it as a result. Why? I am not fighting what my body is telling me to do which is good for recovery. Your body needs to regenerate because if it doesn’t you will burn out. You might think it won’t happen, but trust me it does and a crash and burn is the worst. I sometimes feel jealous of kids because they seem to get the most sleep out of all humans. Could you imagine sleeping for ten hours?
Ten hours of sleep sounds glorious and some children get it, depending on their age range, and no I’m not talking about babies’ people because we already know they sleep close to 18 hours in a given day, if not longer. I will admit a well-rested night of sleep is glorious because you wake up ready to tackle the day and you don’t feel exhausted.
Whenever you’re sleep deprived it takes a little longer to get moving and find your groove, that is not always good when it comes to work habits especially if you have a schedule that bounces all over the place, mornings, afternoons, evenings and midnights. If you know your sleep schedule try to stick to it, because not only will your body appreciate it, but your mind will as well.
