Scientific American: A full night’s rest is key for waking up alert and energized for the day. But a wave of social media habitués, across platforms from TikTok to Reddit, have recently boasted a contrarian-tinted trend: avoiding sleep to feel more awake. Many report feeling weirdly wired—and paradoxically more productive—despite snoozing for three to four hours instead of the seven to nine hours most experts recommend for adults.
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It was really interesting reading why we feel more energized with less sleep. I was attracted to this article due to the one too many all nighters I’ve pulled while being here. It is true, I have felt more energized after staying up after a certain hour. I’vve always thought about it like a wall; I’m always getting so tired up until a certain point and then I’m good and have never been more awake. Reading about how it’s our body’s response to what we think is predatory and something wrong was really interesting, and I think about how new mothers don’t get much sleep, especially when their babies cry. It was also interesting hearing how caffeine works! For the longest time, I always thought it was something that just got your blood pumping, not physically blocking the chemical that urges you to sleep. I am a strong believer in sleep, I even have a sleep tracking app. I’ve found that understanding my individual circadian cycle has helped me tremendously.
Coming from a neuroscience and psychology background, reading about the debunking to a certain degree of this perceptual experience people have is fantastic to hear and hopefully can make its way back to these individuals to illustrate to them how even though they may feel more alert, it likely is causing damage to their overall well-being in some substantive way. What this article highlights even further is the notion that even though we may be perceiving something about ourselves or the world around us, that does not necessarily imply that the perception we have is accurate. In this case, just since someone perceives being more alert in the face of sleep deprivation, it does not mean they have the same mental accuracy if they had gotten a restful night. This notion in general is incredibly important to hold as it ensures you remain skeptical about your own insights and allows you to at least consider your personal blindspots and environmental constraints. Failure to do so may not only lead us astray, but also prevent us from realizing how we have been lead down that particular path.
I was actually thinking about this just the other day. I was wondering why it was so much harder for me to get up in the morning when I had a full 8-10 hours of sleep versus when I go to bed late and get 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Even if getting is easier though, I start to feel the effects after my first class at 10am, which is not good. The concept of sleep inertia makes a lot of sense and that’s why I thought. I assumed it was something to do with which stage of the sleep cycle you were, because it’s easier to wake up from some. Pulling all nighters and getting little to no sleep is so normalized in normal college life but the truth is it really can be detrimental to both your mental and physical health. Not taking care of yourself in favor of getting work done is so common at CMU and schools around the country. I try to never pull all-nighters. Even a little sleep is still something and it’s important.
I admit that I have a really bad sleep schedule. I am a night owl and love the quiet of night and how calm everything is. This leads me to being up later just because I like it more. Additionally, both in high school and now in college, i often find myself doing homework at late hours in the night. These contribute to me getting a lot less sleep than I should. I have definitely felt the wired sense of alertness that the article touches on but that often comes with a crash later where I can barely keep my eyes open. I know that sleep is super important and try to get as much as I can. However, there are a lot of distractions in my life and things trying for my time, and I don’t always have the strongest will to prioritize rest over something I find more entertaining. After reading this article, I think I will try to put in a little more effort into going to bed on time and getting the sleep I need.
I have been aware of this trend on social media for a while now, and I have never really understood it. I really try to only stay awake as long as I have to, sometimes that requires getting little sleep and sometimes I get a lot of sleep. Some of it relates to good and bad time management and sometimes it just has to do with having too much to do. I realize the latter is related to bad time management but what I find happens is that I underestimate how long something will take me or that something comes up that keeps me from doing homework. I have always known that there is a consequence for not sleeping, and I know how much sleep I need to be able to function. What I do not understand is my friends who purposely stay up really late at night, or don't sleep at all, not because they were working and had to but because they want to on a random week night. Going to a school with a no sleep society is really interesting, because it shouldn't exist and sometimes it has to exist but those who choose it I do not understand, it is doing irreparable damage to your body and brain.
I’ll never fully understand the no-sleep culture we’ve developed and the competitiveness involved in it. Ever since arriving at Carnegie, I’ve heard tons of people bragging about how they were able to complete their work on only five hours of sleep, only for someone else to chip in and one-up them with an even smaller number. I think people have begun associating sleep deprivation with a better work ethic or even more ambition, but I disagree. There’s no reason why anyone should be pulling multiple all-nighters weekly to meet their deadlines. If they claim to, they’re either horrible at managing their time or blatantly over exaggerating to fit in with burnout culture. The article talks about how, despite feeling more alert when you’re sleep deprived, your senses are still dulled and your judgement is still clouded. This makes sense—the work that is turned in after an all-nighter is very rarely at the same caliber as work turned in with a clear head.
This is a really interesting read, especially in our industry, that does kind of prioritize the grind culture. I have heard people many times brag about how little sleep they need, or how not getting sleep doesn't seem to affect them. I used to be one of them myself. Lately, I haven't been able to survive off as little sleep as I used to, especially because I don't drink caffeine anymore, and I found myself really grateful for that. Although it can be frustrating at times when I want to keep going and not have anything stopping me, I do find it in some ways helpful to also have my body serve as a physical reminder that I'm not some sort of infallible being. In this industry, protecting your peace and protecting your sleep are often difficult because of the sort of culture that has evolved where if you're not tired, you're not working hard enough. I think that it's a really healthy and unsustainable sort of culture, and although it's slowly changing, I hope that articles like this become more well read and more well known, so that more people understand why this isn't a culture we can allow to stick around.
From my own personal experience this feels kind of true. After 10 or 8 hours of sleep i just want to sleep more and more. I could sleep too much but thats because of different problems i have. REGARDLESS, when i sleep 7-8 hours i feel like a zombie the first hour of the day even if ive head breakfast and coffee, but after 2-4 hours of sleep, or a little 3 hour power nap followed by some caffeine i feel brand new and refreshed. Ive always thought it was because of the amount of REM cycles you get, and that after a certain amount your body is just gonna want to keep getting them because your brain is in optimal information processing mode and wants to stay there like it should. do i think any of this is healthy behavior? Of course not, and neither does this article. It does make sense its the brain kind of placebo -ing itself to believe you are rested and alert.
I can be the first one to admit that I don’t have the best sleep schedule, I’m more of a night person than a day person which means I’m up later than I should be during the night doing my homework and assignments which doesn’t really work out well for me since I can’t sleep during the day because of my classes. I feel like the concept of being tired throughout the day is so normalized in college which is weird since I don’t really think it’s as normalized in the working world. Being sleep deprived isn’t really a good thing especially in college because of the age demographic, even though college students are adults their brains still have some development left which means being sleep deprived can’t be good for them. It’s also interesting to hear that you could feel more tired to waking with more sleep than less sleep, this isn’t really the case for me but it’s interesting to hear that it is possible for that to happen with others
I often say that I am not a morning or night person and am more of a sleep person because I love being asleep. Previously I had believed this was because I consider myself a light sleeper so I find myself having a hard time staying asleep so I in turn slept more but this article outlines some concepts that prove that level of deep sleep can be considered normal. I also found it really interesting to learn that even one night lacking sleep does give you an energy boost but not one that is sustainable over time. I would love to know how napping affects this bodily relationship. If someone gets the temporary boost of energy after a nap how long does it take for them to become used to the state of added sugar released by the liver in order to keep them awake. Overall sleep is needed no matter what but I find it interesting that the body reacts to a lack of sleep by giving you more energy rather than making you more tired in order to get you to go to bed.
I looked at this article because I have noticed this happens to me, when I sleep only 4 or 6 hours, I feel more awake than when I sleep 8 to 10. What the article says about the alertness being a stress response also makes a lot of sense. I have noticed that when I make myself nervous and stressed about waking up on time, by having an important meeting scheduled at 8am or the like, I wake up feeling more alert, but also rather anxious. The article saying that waking people from light sleep or NREM is easier than from REM also makes sense and I have tried to use that in the past, though I didn’t know I was doing so. I had once accidentally set an alarm for a few hours before I normally wake up and had been managing to turn it off in my sleep, with that I had been waking up more alert when my actual alarm went off.
I was really interested in this article because I too feel like the less sleep that I get the more energy and alertness I have. I fully understand that this is not logical and, of course, not sustainable, but it feels true to me nonetheless. To see that other people feel the same is reassuring, and to read the science behind it is fulfilling. I found this article very interesting. The section that stood out the most to me was the section about sleep inertia. I often feel like the more sleep I get the more tired I am the next day. Well, I’ve met other people who feel the same energy burst from not getting enough sleep, I’ve heard very few people who experience this grogginess when they sleep a lot. so it’s very interesting to me to find out that this is a real thing and how it works. Also, just how my body can feel more awake or more tired each day even if I do get a consistent amount of sleep each night. The fact that you can experience this sleep inertia depending on what stage of sleep you are awoken during is so interesting to me and something that I hadn’t heard before.
I am someone who gets not nearly enough sleep. This school and this business make it incredibly difficult to get the appropriate amount of sleep on any given day. I will always prioritize work over sleep because if I don’t then I’m gonna have to one day or another. it got really bad last semester where I had a week where I slept at most 12 hours total that whole week. so this semester I tried letting the assignment be late but now it caught up and I’m gonna have to pull multiple all nighters in a row to catch up. Some people will say they have never had to pull an all nighter here the problem is there’s other factors at play. we all work at different paces and we all have different things in our personal lives. I have missed a lot of sleep because I made the choice to have dinner with a friend instead of do my work. And I stand by those choices. Sleep isn’t something we can all just get. If I chose sleep instead then I would have no time to see my friends or I would fail my classes. I try to make work I’m proud of and work I would be happy to have on a portfolio. But that means sometimes getting very little sleep and in this profession doing what I love is worth it.
Sleep is a fascinating part of all of our lives, that we know so intimately yet don’t know the ins and out of. I feel like it is common place in schools, particularly college, to be working so much that you can’t or don’t sleep. People tend to romanticize these bad habits thinking that its cool and smart to overwork yourself. This is a really common mindset freshman year in the DP program, that I think my class has done a good job of nipping that in the butt. I know that significantly less people were staying all night in 33, or at least not “competing” for who stayed up the latest the night before. As we progress into the future I think healthy habits are coming back into priority, specifically since COVID caused us to reevaluate the way the work week structure. Prioritizing sleep has changed the way I function this year, and I hope to continue to prioritize it throughout my education and life.
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