The Evil Eyebrow

These People are Insane…

Written by

Bill Ruhsam

in

…and are trying to kill you through lack of sleep

You may recall my recent post about Unclutterer and the person who was advocating less sleep to get more done.

Well, they’re at it again. I say to Unclutterer, by posting something like this on your blog, you’re tacitly approving of a practice that undermines the health of the people involved. Stop it.

I call your attention to #1 of the linked list:

1. Oversleeping. Waking up just 10 minutes late has the ability to throw your entire day off schedule. Use a timer for a week and determine how long it actually takes you to get ready in the morning, commute to your office, and start working on valuable action items. Are you waking up early enough to get everything done?

The only way I would approve of this item is if it said “Waking up just 10 minutes late, after already receiving your required minimum amount of sleep, has the ability to throw your entire day off schedule.”

That and anyone who can’t incorporate a 10 minute snooze into their daily schedule without dire consequence needs to cut back on what they’re doing. If 10 minutes of unplanned time ruins your day, you need another plan.

Comments

3 responses to “These People are Insane…”

  1. Sharon Avatar
    Sharon

    It was advice like this that caused me to throw several books on “organization” across the room before I read GTD. Really, a timer in the morning? I’m sure it takes me a different amount of time to get ready when I’m riding my bike versus taking the bus. And what if I’m out of peanut butter for lunch and have to figure out something different to make?

    Do these people live in the real world? Or do they, as I suspect, all drive their cars to work (and work in the same place everyday) and have wives who deal with the messy reality of breakfast/lunch/kids/cats/dogs/entropy which just might throw your schedule off by 10 minutes and mess up YOUR ENTIRE DAY OH NOES.

    /rant

    Also, science supports you: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19139325

    To sum up, after collecting sleep data on 153 healthy participants, researchers dosed them with a rhinovirus and found that “participants with less than 7 hours of sleep were 2.94 times (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18-7.30) more likely to develop a cold than those with 8 hours or more of sleep.”

  2. Annie Avatar
    Annie

    I accepted this piece of advice better than the last suggestion to cut back on sleep. I interpreted this one more as “be mindful of your time”.

    Some people have a bad sense of time. They fail to realize how long it actually takes to do something, so they end up being rushed. For example, I have a commuter student who lives in my town. She’s frequently late and rushing to her first class. So one day, I asked her how long it takes to get to school. Her response, 30 minutes. Is it possible to get to school in 30 minutes? Yes. However, one should not expect this as a realistic amount of time in morning traffic. It also does not account for time spent finding a commuter parking space and getting from the parking lot to the building.

  3. Bill Ruhsam Avatar
    Bill Ruhsam

    @Sharon: Oh yes. The sleep-deprivation/sickness connection is something that people who bitch about con crud never seem to bring up.

    @Annie: you’re probably right, but reading the piece doesn’t make that clear and if you’re making recommendations on a productivity blog that might affect the health of your constituents, I’d prefer they be precise.

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