the day after

Most of my Google hits come from searches for how to survive the day after an all-nighter. Apparently people are crazy enough to do these things all through the summer as well as during the school year.

Don’t feel bad, I did it am doing it too.

So how do you make it through the day after? For me, it comes down to three things: 1) stay busy, 2) stay sensitive to caffeine, and 3) get enough sleep on the other nights.

Moms have it the worst, they really do. If they stay up most of the night, they get to spend the next day in the company of a cranky two-year-old doing the same mundane things they always do. Students get some adult interaction and demands on their intellect, at least. I find that if life continues to be demanding the day after, I can rise to the occasion, and sometimes I forget about being tired.

As for caffeine– I know you don’t typically plan an all-nighter weeks in advance, but if you’re coming up on a busy month (or the beginning of the school year, for that matter), STOP drinking it every day. Don’t even have it every other day. You need to be able to make it till 4 or 5am on a Mountain Dew and save the quad shot or the RockStar for the next day. You’ll feel so much better, and also save money, if you don’t have to dose yourself with 300mg of caffeine every time you stay up.

Lastly, and this is obvious, the impact of an all-nighter is reduced when you’ve slept enough the preceding nights. I have friends who prefer a series of nights with 3-4 hours of sleep, but I find that I do a lot better when I sleep 8 hours the rest of the week and save up all the not-sleeping for one big push. Each to his own… but my way is better .

My advice, in short: plan to make your life conducive to pulling all-nighters (ironic, isn’t it?).

And if you’re a poor caffeine-addicted, chronically sleep-deprived, and not-very-busy soul who stumbled into this nocturnal business by accident, I can offer no cure. But take heart, it will be over soon enough.

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~ by Jess on August 16, 2011.