Why Don't We Sleep More?
It's 2am in the morning. You haven't done much the entire day because you couldn't focus. You need sleep. You /know/ you need sleep. Instead of calling it a night, however, you decide to click on "just one more" youtube link to see if it's interesting. Another 2 hours pass before you finally drop dead on your bed. Sounds familiar?
It's been a hectic week in the office. Nobody on the team has left work before 8pm. More than once today, you have inadvertently dozed off in front of your computer monitor. Your body urges you to go home as soon as you can to get some rest. At the end of the night, however, you end up chugging beer at the bar with a few friends. Sounds familiar?
It's a strange phenomenon: our brain can convince us to doze off and it can convince us that we're tired, but it can't convince us to take the rest we need. Instead, short term rewards (i.e a funny youtube video or a night out) lure us away, as if the short term rewards are the only way to justify the painful day.
For some of us, the results are minor: we have one or two of these "bad days" once in a while, but we take the necessary breaks over the weekend and recover to full strength. For others, results are detrimental: a lack of sleep leads to an unproductive day, an unproductive day leads to a longer day in office, a longer day in office leads to a lack of sleep, and a death spiral conspires.
There's an euphemism for this ongoing death spiral: "Work hard; play hard." The term is predominant at certain academic institutions, long-hour industries, and work-intensive cultures (e.g Hong Kong, Tokyo). The connotation of the term is excellent: accomplish a lot, play a lot, and neglect the boring stuff (i.e sleep).
But what exactly does such a life style accomplish?
On the surface, "work hard, play hard" points to a productive life. Yet, from personal experience, I've never met too many accomplished people who literally works hard and plays hard. One doesn't hear Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs partying away every weekend. The people who uses the attractive phrase are often university representatives or HR recruiters. Yet I've never once hear an accomplished student or office worker boasting the "work hard, play hard" culture at their school or company.
Looking through the surface, one realizes that the lifestyle is not so intuitive. A person only has so much energy. Work requires energy, play requires energy, and sleep replenishes energy. Where does one find the energy to be productive (i.e work) if one neglects replenishing energy in the first place? In another words, how does one work effectively the day after getting hammered?
So maybe the point of "work hard, play hard" isn't to optimize for productivity. Perhaps it optimizes for "a good time." Our brains, after all, don't seek productivity as much as contentment or "happiness." Yet this doesn't seem to make sense either. Ask a person during a party how they feel and they'll probably say "GOOOooooood~", but ask them anywhere else - at home hung over or at work sleep deprived - and they most definitely would not say they're happy. Neither Japan nor Hong Kong ranks high on the Life Satisfaction Index.
Hence my question: why don't our brains prompt us to rest more assertively? Is this just a case of short term rewards outweighing long term rewards? Surely though, sleep is more immediately gratifying than "potential fun?"
Speaking of sleep - I should really head to sleep myself... just let me close off these IM convos...
