This week’s Write Anything Wednesday is late because … well, look at the title.
I alluded to this on Sunday, but my sleep patterns are messed up. Sadly, I don’t see any relief in sight.
What’s Keeping Me Up at Night
Various things are messing with my sleep.
Part of it is my own bad time management. I need to do a full assessment of the time it takes me to do important tasks and find a way to speed up some processes without compromising quality.
Another part of it is my living situation. Without getting into too much detail, I will say that noise is my biggest problem. I’ll leave you to guess what I mean, but it’s beyond my control yet extremely annoying.
How I’m Dealing with It
Not well, actually.
When I get the chance, I fall asleep during the day, but that’s not a great solution. I usually need to work during the day! So, if I were to sleep during working hours, I would miss important calls, among other things.
Also, my most productive hours are in the morning. By losing sleep, I lose focus and thus productivity.
Add my bad time management, and it’s a vicious cycle.
The Effects of Little Sleep
At times like this, I go back and think about Arianna Huffington. She’s a big advocate of people getting enough sleep each day. She gets around 7 hours at night, but sometimes takes naps throughout the day to get her full 8 hours. Huffington has given a number of interviews about sleep and she gave a TED speech about the topic in 2010.
I should also mention that Huffington has now published a book based called The Sleep Revolution. You could view a preview of the book here.
I think I first read about Huffington’s sleep hours from Forbes, and there was an accompanying infographic:
Courtesy of: Home Arena
Anyway, the point being driven here is how important it is for people to get enough sleep each day. Adults need about 7-8 hours, although some can get by with less (like Jon Gruden, who only needs 4).
In the end, sleep deprivation is dangerous. For starters, the lack of sleep cuts into one’s quality of life. In fact it shortens it. The lack of sleep impairs’ one’s alertness. This can harm others. Anyone driving drowsy should know that it’s worse than driving drunk. This was partly confirmed by Mythbusters in 2010, after a study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety determined that drowsy drivers caused 17% of fatal accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 7,000 deaths were caused by drowsy driving in the past decade.
I can certainly see the effects of my sleep deprivation (but I’m not driving while drowsy). While I have never been the fastest person in the world at anything, the lack of sleep has made me slower. It’s harder for me to focus on important tasks and on those I do at my leisure. I have still done the most important tasks, but it’s unnecessarily difficult.
I have to find a real solution to this problem and get back on a normal schedule. It feels great to get the right amount of sleep and I can tell the difference immediately. In the meantime, I have to sneak naps whenever I can…while working on various projects.
P.S: To be honest, the prompts from Writerish Writings were pretty tempting, especially the last one:
- If you (or your character) could meet anything, in any era, who would it be?
- Leora heard the wind calling to her but she couldn’t understand its language…
- An assassin finds out the hard way he’s allergic to his intended victim’s perfume. What are the consequences?
And I do need to take a fictional writing challenge if I’m ever to get where I need to go, but … maybe I’ll steal that for some other time …
P.P.S.: Before I got started on the image at the top, I was inspired by an image by kiberstalker (Shutterstock)
Shmaltz and Menudo 