This is an article that I wrote recently for my assignment in a course that I am taking this quarter at Stanford, called Sleep and Dreams. I learnt so much from it and I cant wait to share it with NUSHS students when I come back, but the biggest thing is the importance of sleep. I cant stress this enough. I am obtaining so much sleep this quarter and I am still so happy, enjoying every minute of my life.
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The time is 2 a.m., but it could have been 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., and you couldn’t care less. What you care about is finishing the homework that is due a few hours later in school / completing the report that your boss wants you to turn in / partying and dancing with the cute guy or girl a few steps away. Sleep is the last thing on your mind, because it is really not that important, it is a waste of time, and really, if you keep sleeping people will think you are plain lazy.
Sounds familiar? This is precisely the reason why we are constantly tired in the daytime, why 5 alarm clocks and 20 snooze alarms are ineffective in getting us out of the bed and why dreamland beckons when we least expect it. To cut the long story short, each of us has a certain amount of sleep requirement every night that we need to keep us functioning at our optimal level. By not making sleep a priority and cutting back on it, we fall short of the minimal sleep requirement every day, thus incurring a sleep debt that prevents us from functioning optimally.
For instance, if I need 9 hours of sleep every day, but I decide to sleep for only 6 hours every day for a week, I would have effectively incurred a sleep debt of (9-6) x 7 = 21 hours. If I did that for 2 weeks, I would have incurred a sleep debt of a WHOPPING 42 HOURS!
So what happens when you incur a high sleep debt? It starts taking over your life and your mind. It causes you to be moody and grumpy towards everyone around you. It consumes your mind with thoughts about beds, pillows and bolsters at times when you badly need to concentrate on what your boss is telling you. Most importantly, it shuts down your eyelids when you least expect it, putting you at risk for accidents that can be fatal.
You wouldn’t close your eyes while biking or driving, would you? No one in their right mind will do that consciously, but many people do that subconsciously when they are deprived of sleep. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving has resulted in “100,000 automobile wrecks, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 fatalities” (http://www.sleepdex.org/deficit.htm). Imagine the lives that could have been saved if each of these people had gotten more sleep. Imagine that anyone, including you, could have been like them so long as they did not get the amount of sleep they needed.
Sleep debt is like real-time debt on credit. It is cumulative, and it never dissipates over time. If you owe $5 a year ago and you never paid up, you can be sure that the credit card company will chase you down for every single cent of it. It is the same with sleep debt; it does not disappear…
…until you pay it back. Yes, by sleeping more than the daily requirement, you are essentially reducing the amount of sleep debt you have. It is that simple. After reducing your sleep debt, you will feel your productivity increase by volumes (so much so that it outweighs the amount that you would have done otherwise slogging through the night in your sleepy state), your mood uplifted and a much more optimistic outlook on life.
“But I don’t believe you”, I hear you say, “I tried to catch up on my sleep by sleeping for 12 hours yesterday and I don’t see any significant change”. Well, that only means that you should sleep MORE. Assuming that you have a sleep debt of 30 hours and your daily sleep requirement is 9 hours, an increase in 3 hours of sleep would reduce not reduce your sleep debt by much. The only solution is to try to catch up on your sleep more often to reduce your sleep debt further. You will know it when you have reduced it enough because you will feel yourself being much happier than you used to be.
I used to be a skeptic of this theory about sleep debt. I did not believe that it was possible to achieve more by sleeping less. I used to be a college student who felt that I had not enough time to study and get good grades, let alone join student groups. I survived (miraculously) on 5 hours of sleep per day. I would drag myself out of bed every morning, entertaining thoughts on skipping class just for that day in exchange for more time with my pillow and bed.
However, over the break, I tried catching up on my sleep, and it has worked wonders. I am taking the maximum courseload right now, much more work than I used to have, but I am always seen with a smile on my face. I am a week ahead in my readings, and I finish my assignments at least half a week before it is due. I feel so happy every single day doing my work and being able to concentrate on what I am doing. Most importantly, I am getting my 8 hours of sleep every day and am not prone to potentially fatal accidents that may be a result of my sleep deprivation!
You can be like that too! If you are still skeptical, I say try it for a week. Just sleep more than what you think your daily requirement (typically 8-9 hours) is. Do that for a week, and then you will notice the drastic change in your life – simply due to a simple yet beneficial step of sleeping MORE.
After all, why would you, or anyone for that matter, want to live a life that is tiring, miserable, and potentially fatal?
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