There is a certain romanticism surrounding fatigue. Long hours. Hateful alarm clocks. Cup after cup of burnt, black coffee. There is glory in being sleep-deprived, and still trudging through.
As I write this, I am on the other side of a near all-nighter. I worked all night, laid down in bed at 12:30, dozed restlessly until 3:30, got out of bed, and went back to work. I have spent the bulk of today beyond the reach of caffeine. While I diligently downed coffee throughout the day, after about 11 AM, it lost its magic powers. After today, I have just one thing to say: being tired sucks.
Please know, I buy into the romantic ideal of the coffee-in-the-veins insomniac as much as the next person—hence electing to pursue the all-nighter.
But really, this ideal is simply a story. And as with any heroic fiction, it glosses over the wrecked and sleeping bodies of those it has left in its wake. We read about the start-up entrepreneur who got 3 hours of sleep for the first 5 years of her business, but now makes 3 million dollars a year! Not the perpetually underperforming, depressed office worker who hasn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in years.
Other people’s “true genius” may kick in at 4 in the morning. But for me, the 11th hour rarely holds a secret burst of creativity and gusto. More often than not, as the hours draw on, more and more of my mind is focused on sleep. I contemplate putting my head down, and fight not to do so. That back-and-forth is what the bulk of my energy is spent on. And while my guard is down and my energy is low, all of my worst habits come for me; I don’t have the strength to keep them away. So my brain is shot from fatigue, making even simple work a challenge, and I’m mired in 16 different forms of procrastination. I’m getting less work done, and taking more time to do it.
After these periods, when I finally catch up on sleep, I feel like I have friggin’ super powers. “Churns out paragraphs in a single bound! Faster than a speeding deadline!” I blow through things in minutes that I had stared at for hours when I had been tired. And on top of everything else, I’m not in a miserable mood! That certainly helps matters.
Over-indulging in fatigue is a vicious cycle. I work slowly, so work piles up. To trim that pile, I have to stay up late and wake up early. And so I wake up tired, and the pile builds again. It’s mind-boggling to realize how just how long you can keep yourself tired. Weeks. Months. People do it for years, even entire lifetimes! Because it’s heroic. Because it’s glorious.
Sleep is always the lowest priority item for me. Writing, exercising, cooking, relaxing—I do them all, and chip away at my sleep to steal extra time for each. And as I grow more tired, I get less out of each of those things—even relaxing! To accomplish the myriad goals I’ve set for myself, sleep needs to come first. Or at least near the top. It’s the glue that holds it all together, because it holds me together.
There is glory in the hardship of fatigue. But I’m not interested in glory. I have enough trouble pursuing my goals as it is. I don’t need to throw bonus obstacles in my way. I will gladly take the path of least resistance.
I will gladly get some sleep.