So, I am coming to terms with working smarter, not harder. Last minute binge working can get results, but it's just a quick fix. Maybe it has roots from previous relationships, or maybe it's a carryover from teenage years of procrastination- if you submerge yourself into something the job will in fact get done, and sometimes it'll even get done with detail if the obsession to finish has taken control. Somewhere along the way I learned that this was living. I find myself in a battle against deep feelings of always needing to do more work. Focusing on too many jobs caused me to lose focus at every job.Īfter all, you can't do justice to anything if you half-ass everything.

It hasn't been easy, but it is now a conscious effort to limit my work demands in the active attempt to be smarter with my time and more effective in the career(s) I do have. Come hell or high water, my mission was both tunnel-visioned and near-sighted.Īfter some serious self-reflection and amid personal life changes it was obvious that things needed to change. I had to stay the course or knock out a gear tooth trying. In my mind, in order to get ahead I had to plow forward. Combined with late night website work and planning for educational tour trips, I was a wreck. Teaching, coaching, and more coaching took up much of my twenties. I knew no other way. At one point, besides parenting, I would go though three paid positions in a single day's time. In some cases I was roped in under the weight of my own 'can't-say-no' personality, and in other cases I was a founding organizer- in any case, only one man to blame. I have found myself embedded in multiple jobs and several time-consuming obligations for years now. Successful people know that doing otherwise would cause the flame to flicker out well before the oil runs low. It occurs every so often as an important idea hits, and then time efficacy takes over. But while this can result in working long hours without food or sleep, it isn't month to month or year to year. The brain is then subconsciously loaded with purpose the energy of desire used as extra oil for the midnight burning. Once we find a passion, once we get enamored with a job or a task, we can pour ourselves into it. Hardly the image of ambition the initial quote portrays, right?Īll this considered, being smart and efficient with work, sleep, and time management does not mean a person lacks drive or initiative. A sleep deprived individual can't maintain coherence, and therefore will not be of any use to interrogators, let alone be the hard working 'go-getter' we would consider a successful entrepreneur. In the end, depriving a person of sleep actually serves much less interrogative help than anticipated since delirium sets in, causing a temporary break from reality.

And because the human mind can develop delusions and hallucinations in a state that closely mimics dementia, sleep deprivation is also a method of significant mental harm. With sleep deprivation, the immune system is in particular distress as it cannot perform the much needed regenerative functions during rest. Sleep deprivation is also a well-known torture device, having been used as an 'enhanced interrogation technique' for centuries now in attempts to gain useful information from opposing prisoners of war. and other countries are still incomplete, but it begs the question: how much of our worldwide illness has historically had a direct connection to stress without the necessary recovery? Besides depression and an increased risk of suicide, studies list heart attacks and cerebral hemorrhages as a result of karoshi. Since the 1970's there are estimates that around 200 Japanese deaths a year come from long hours of work in combination with short hours of sleep. With research specifically set in Japan, working oneself to death is a tragedy so common that a medical term has been coined for it: karoshi. It has been chronicled in the past half-century that there are people in this world who are literally working themselves to death.

No rest for the weary? No hope in the long-run. Cloaked as aspiration is just stupidity and probable burnout. like that of a dream in the fog of sleep deprivation. While it may look tough on paper or sound self-assuring out loud, the motivational message is lost.

You see, too much work and a lack of recovery are actually disastrous for one's personal well-being. Unrealistic, to say the least, this mindset may stem from good intentions, but it lacks intelligence when it comes to stress and the human body. There’s this ridiculous notion out there built on conceit, mixed with one part ambition and two parts testosterone: 'I'll sleep when I'm dead.'

I ll sleep when i am dead