Let me start off by saying I am writing this on one day where I slept for about 6 hours and let me tell you, for my age and regular sleep pattern it is a nosedive of energy and focus. I feel like I might just get off track by breathing the wrong way.

What was I saying?

Oh. Right. Rest.

Anyways, we like to idolize the long nights, and ridiculous shift times we do work, but what we don't realize is how little productive we actually are during these periods.

It's typical long unfocused periods of task switching and then on top of that with little to no good nightly sleep.

I felt this was a necessary post for me to write as the difference in my capacity (as of writing this) for work and general socialization is staggeringly different.

So let's roll of the bed into this, shall we?

Glorification Of Work

Overnight success and unnecessary hours create, well, popularity I guess. It seems to be of current culture is particularly invested in hustle culture or maximum overdrive productivity. This seems faulty.

It becomes an obsession, and the work itself becomes a distraction from the image we are trying to create. The illusion of progress we are attempting to make while scrolling Instagram or YouTube on a "15-minute" break, which equals (furiously does calculations) about 2.13 hours of break time.

It's a lie we indulge in, and we have glorified it in the media.

The antidote?

This is what Cal Newport would describe as Deep Work. Shorter, but more focused periods of working are becoming increasingly rare, and increasingly more valuable. This is what many call "The Flow" state.

This is also what many would describe as a good way to lose track of time. You lose track of what time it is because you are so busy being focused on work, homework, or this article. :)

Instead of focusing on how we look, we focus on getting the work done. We change our view on what is more important, looking productive or truly being productive.

The Myth of Multitasking & The Need Of Spaced Repetition

I can multitask. Said Every. Single. 14 year old kid. I kid you not. (See what I did there). In any case, we like to think we can jump from topic to topic, or more accurately project to project without loss of concentration.

This is false. We have attention stickiness to the original project that we just task switched from also known as attention residue.

In fact doing deep work until you feel truly spent, then taking a much-needed break either from the subject or the material together and then doing something else, will not only lead to better quality of work, but better learning/understanding as well.

No More Sleep, Sleep, Sleep...

Party on gamers.

"I have been up since 3 am".

"I got you beat Chad, I've been up since 4:35 am".

"Amateurs"

"What was that?!"

(Looks over to see a Redbull-infested, puffy-eyed Redditor who hasn't slept since the '60s. 1960's that is. )

"Amateurs"

An exaggeration? I hope so.

My point is we make sleep a pissing contest of sorts to where whoever is being the most degenerate to their biology in their sleep schedule wins the person of the month statute.

Which is probably fashioned from Redbull and Monster energy cans. (And yes this can happen. My class built a few in high school for, er...science.)

Furthermore, I think we ought to flip this on its head. Start talking about how much sleep we are getting, and also how good of sleep we are getting.

Sleep is the human superpower, it rebuilds muscles, sorts out our brains, and gives us our daily doses of manhood known as testosterone. Not to mention that rejuvenating feeling we get in the morning when the day just feels right after a good night's rest and then following the morning stretch just hits the spot.

So, in total, go get some damn sleep.

Now if you don't mind I going to go to class to sleep...I mean study. Yeah, study.