Sleeping is a biological imperative. Majority of animals on Earth take part in it. For us humans, a good night sleep contributes to our overall well-being, allowing us to function and keep our mood stable. Depending on our genetics, we could be needing anywhere from five hours to eight hours of sleep.

However, our modern lifestyle does not really encourage us to get a good night sleep consistently.

For most of us living in a modern city, we might be up and awake for as long as eighteen hours. In some cases, maybe even twenty hours. Some of us have a demanding day job that require us to wake up early but sleep late. And that’s not to say all your wakeful hours are spent at work. But rather, there’s 101 things for us to take care of in life, ranging from having a simple dinner with family to settling the bills to getting your kids ready for bed. So by the time you actually gone to bed, it’s probably past midnight. Before you know it, your alarm clock goes off and you looked at it, you realised it is already morning. It’s time to wake up.

For me, I tend to sleep only after 12am. It’s not because I want to sleep that late. I do have a long sleep latency. It can take me up to an hour to fall asleep. So, if I turned in any earlier, I would have tossed and turned in my bed until I get very frustrated. This would only make the situation worse. Sometimes, I will simply talk to myself until I do sleep. Either way, I find myself falling asleep after 12am.

I don’t see why I need to force myself into bed so early and suffer?

So, taking that sleep latency into account, I would get only around 5 to 6 hours of sleep every day. That means I am one of the 62% Singaporeans who are sleep deprived because I have to wake up by 6.50am. We as a nation rank second in the world when it comes to being sleep deprived. Not a good statistic, mind you.

I’m only functioning everyday because of my caffeine intake on most days.

With this consistent sleep debt, it won’t be surprising if you find yourself getting irritable very easily. You might also lose any motivation to do anything. There had been way too many times when I feel like I’m about to lose control of my emotions again. Furthermore, it’s affecting my creativity in really subtle ways. Associations between two different ideas becomes harder to create. After all, the best ideas are usually at the intersection of different fields or topic.

Then the mind also stops picking up on subtle changes in the environment as quickly. Understanding of ideas and concepts mentioned by people during conversation and meetings also suffer in terms of speed.

If the sleep debt continues to accumulate, productivity will definitely go out of the window along with the motivation to do anything. Not even coffee can save you at this point in time. For example, it took me two hours just to finish coding a piece of function at work when it could have taken me half an hour or less under normal circumstances.

Last but not least, the lack of sleep could also kill you as your body is not able to get the rest it needs. You will have a higher chance of developing high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.

But it is not the end of the world.

Self-awareness is key here. You have to take stock of what’s going on in your life and identify the problem. Once you do, only then you could attempt to fix the problem.

A good starting point would be to clear your evening schedules. You should always prioritise sleep over any other activity and there is never a good justification for you to sacrifice sleep. Not even work. There is always another time to do whatever activities you have planned for the night.