Sleep Debt

Several years ago, I was shown (as part of a mandatory class) a video that discussed healthy habits generally and especially those involving sleep.  It was this very same video that informed us all that it was essential to get at least nine and a half hours of sleep every night.  A fact to which 99% of students in the class responded by laughing and rolling their eyes.

Maybe that video had a point after all.  Maybe any less than that is unhealthy and makes you feel worse.  But the fact remains that it is not a reasonable expectation for the majority of people to get nine and a half hours of sleep.  It's practically laughable.  Assuming a schedule that starts a workday at 9:00 am and requires one to wake up at 7:30 in order to grab breakfast (you know, that other healthy thing that most of us don't bother with), take a shower, get dressed, and actually get to work, one would have to go to bed at 10 pm. 

To a point, that's not entirely unreasonable.  But the fact remains that more and more young adults are becoming nocturnal in their scheduling.  2 am is no longer late, in fact it is blessedly early compared to the usual 4 am bedtime.  And even 2 am is still significantly short of the requisite nine and a half hours of sleep (not surprisingly). 

What it comes down to is that most of us are trudging around with this massive sleep-debt.  As that movie put it, for every hour of sleep you miss, put a brick in your backpack--that's the effect it has on your energy.  The more sleep it is, the more your energy is drained.  It's a simple concept, and one that many of us have undoubtedly become particularly intimate with, as we carry entire construction sites with us for weeks on end.

The fact that we're familiar with it, though, does not in any way make it a good thing.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  Habits are hard to break.  There's a reason we have sayings like "can't teach an old dog new tricks" and "old habits die hard."  It's because we've noticed that once we get into a routine, it's a cycle that gets awfully hard to break, fairly quickly. 

So walking around with this sleep-debt continuously drains of our energy, motivation, and good mood.  This is why we all really need to learn to sleep at reasonable hours and for longer.  Not that it's particularly plausible, which perhaps makes this rant hypocritical.  But that's alright.  The facts in it remain.  As does the desperate need to catch up on sleep, which is what I intend to do shortly.  Good night.