People in the tech industry at most sacrifice sleep for something else. Might it be extending time for family, gaming, learning, thinking or perhaps doing work over-time.
I see nothing wrong about it but you'll soon notice that it affects your mental stability and performance the next day -- then, you should be worried. For most people, sacrificing sleep takes a lot of effort to do. Thus, this makes them love sleep more than anything else.
In the world of trading, time and effort are the most valuable and most expensive.
Personal Experience:
Lately, I have been practicing a four hour sleep routine. I normally spend most of my time; reading articles, practicing golang/python programming, enhancing devops skills, watching tech videos (from conferences and gatherings), listening podcast about life, business and technology. It now runs in awhile that my body was about to cope-up with the sleeping hours and waking up seems to be a muscle memory.
The main reason why I am driving myself to push on doing extra tasks day-by-day is to have advancement of my career journey. For someone who doesn't have a proper education, the last thing you want to do is to settle with the little knowledge that you currently have. Not everyone might appreciate it, but the internet is full of resources and if you have connectivity, you can learn anything you want to know, utmost free.
While the ones stated are true, I still feel that efficiency is not met within my routine. Even with a longer hours of being awake.
Some other side-effects are the following:
- Easily triggered anger
- Shorten patience
- Lousy analytical skills
- Short term memory
- Lack of vocabulary
- Loss sense of coordination
- Absent minded
Just Because You’re Doing A Lot More, Doesn’t Mean You’re Getting A Lot More Done. It's not how much you have, it's what you do with it. ~ Denzel Washington
Psychological Momentum:
Is an event where you are empowered to do and accomplish something. It is when you increase your productivity and performance at the same time, while observing focus on a much longer period.
Personal Plan:
Rather than planning to sleep for 4 hours and stay up for 20 hours, my new routine now would depend on the following:
(1) Did I make the day worth it?
(2) Am I feeling fulfilled?
If I am able to satisfy those questions with positive impact, then, I know.. I did well on that day! I will not feel guilty for sleeping less to do more work or do less work to take ample rest.
Just like other games, playing without strategy will set things on fire and will only give you problems.
Strategies:
- Always write your chores, this is the only way for you to easily sum-up your day.
- Always write to-do lists, this is the best way you can prepare for tomorrow. Being organized in your day, is one good strategy.
- Apply "priority" to your tasks, this is the best way to manage your time. Do what matters most.
- Rest when you need it, no matter what your doing and where you're at. If you feel exhausted and drained, always go for a nap or take a break. It's important to see that if you're no longer being productive and progressive on your work, there's no point of doing it.
Personal Note:
Whenever you experience psychological momentum, put your head-phones on and don't let anyone disturb you, unless it's so important.
