Image by Drew Herron
Are you feeling tired but you can’t sleep yet because you have piles of work to finish?
Worry not because that’s a normal thing for me (I have to stay up almost every week) so I’ll gladly share with you these great not-so-secret tips that have helped me stay up to 3 days (Maximum before I collapse):
1) Buy energy drinks
Livita or Red Bull, you name it just buy as many as you like, at least 6 cans.
When I was young, I was scared to drink a lot because I keep hearing that it’s not good for your health (it is in fact not good for your health).
Because of that, I ended up buying just 1 tin for the night and I found out that it wasn’t working at all because after an hour or two, you’ll get sleepy again.
So I went down to the nearest shop to buy another and to my surprise, there was another student buying a whole carton of Red Bulls.
A WHOLE carton!
At that moment I realized that we need to drink a few tins and not just one because if your work is really important, would you still care about itsy bitsy health?
2) Take a 15 minutes break every hour
This is because you can’t just keep on working for many hours after you’re tired because if you do, you’ll finish lesser things than you though you would.
Sure when working during the day, we can work 9-5 every week without feeling like dying but when staying up, it’s a whole different story.
Our brain can only handle so much because night time is actually set as the sleeping time for humans.
So if you’ve been working since morning till midnight, it’s best to reward yourself at least 15 min every hour.
Although it seems like you are wasting time, you will definitely get a boost of energy and after that.
3) The power of the brain will help you get through
When all else fails, you need to start using your brain to keep yourself awake.
Coffee and energy drinks can only help you so much because when you force yourself to do more difficult tasks, your motivation will fail and you will feel like giving up.
Trust me, I’ve been there.
To counter this, you need to find a pretty strong reason to push yourself and get through the night to finish your work in time for the next day.
Sometimes for me, I like to do work harder knowing that my reputation is at stake (just some Asian thing) but for some, it may differ.
Personal reasons are the best.
For example, my ex who are in the same class broke up with me when we have a due date the next day.
Naturally, anyone would feel awful after getting dumped.
But I didn’t want to show her how weak I was because that would make her win the fight although it isn’t.
So no matter how sleepy I was, I kept that fire burning on the dance floor so that I will get through the night and finish work the next day and come feeling happy.
That fire did helped me get through the night surprisingly and my ex was asking me why do I seem calm because she totally regret her actions.
I told her “thanks for showing me your true colours” and left her feeling pretty good.
Moral of the story, power of the mind is your last line of defense when all those coffee and energy drinks fail so do use them well.
Conclusion
Everybody needs to stay up every now and then but with all those focus on how to stay up, you also need to focus on getting your work done because most people actually waste 83% of their whole time staying up for nothing.
Therefore your mind will be your greatest asset when all else fails so be sure to use that to test your limits.
And please, do get some sleep immediately after all is done to avoid Insomnia
