The delicate art of the optional all-nighter
When I was in college, I trained myself to sleep on airplanes. It’s easy, really. You just do an all-nighter before your flight. Now I have a Pavlovian response to flying, such that as soon as I lean back on that unyielding headrest with the circulated air pumping in my face, I’m out. It doesn’t always last, though, so I’ll sometimes still do the all-nighter before in order to make sure I can sleep through most of a flight.
Tonight I’m taking a red-eye to the Bahamas for a friend’s wedding, so I slept only two hours. Should be perfect.
It’s tough, though, to get yourself when you don’t have to. My technique? I use some important task that I MUST get done before I leave, and I procrastinate that task juuuuust enough. After you’ve done lots of time-wasting and feel like going to sleep, you can’t, because you still have to do the important task. For example, my to-do list last night included working on a client’s web site for a few hours, contacting the people involved in the spec commercial we’ll be shooting, and buying some pants to wear to the wedding.
Faced with that work to do, what did I do when I got home? Watched Mythbusters, then Lost, then last night’s The Shield, then the new South Park. Then I dove in to several episodes of season seven of The West Wing. That lasted me until about 4 a.m., at which point I felt like falling asleep. But I couldn’t, because I still needed to work on the web page. Brilliant. So I built web stuff until about 8 a.m., and finally let myself sleep. But I had to set an alarm for a couple hours later, and I couldn’t sleep through it, because I still had to send e-mail and buy clothes.) The trick, of course, is knowing just how many West Wing episodes to watch before you start your work. It’s a science. Few people accuse me of making healthy choices when it comes to sleep, but at least I will arrive in the Bahamas well rested from a night of plane sleep.
More from me when I’m back next week. I’m about to spend 3.5 days away from the internet, which I’m not sure I’ve done since there was an internet.
Xanthe Neal on 
jane on
April 17th, 2007 at 11:51 am
By way of an update, let me just say that my no-sleep strategy totally backfired.
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