During my first year teaching high school, the change to what my life had been like before teaching was colossal.
Unused to the constant demands of students, faculty meetings, lesson planning, and addressing a new class every fifty minutes, I was in bed each night by 9:00 at the latest. During my prep period, I sometimes took naps just so I could get through the afternoon. I’d close my classroom door, crawl under my desk, and fall into a deep sleep for 25 minutes.
Those power naps were often what made the difference between getting through the rest of the day and barely keeping my wits about me.
Over the years, I continued to take naps during my prep period, but I never felt as bone-tired as I did my rookie season. I grew accustomed to the pace of my teaching life. I learned how to decompress, destress, and disengage when I needed to without sacrificing extra energy or time.
In short, I adapted to my environment and working conditions.
Sleep Is Good
With everything different now because of COVID-19, you may be feeling bone-tired at the end of what seems like a day that never ends, wondering if you’re really as tired as you feel? (You are.) Or are you simply imagining things? (You’re not.)
Radical changes in a short period of time cause significant stress to the body and mind. For millions of people, suddenly being home all day with everyone else is enough to set off emotional alarm bells every twenty minutes, drastically increasing the need for sleep once the adrenaline rush of living life in a new state of normal — and that late afternoon latte — subsides.
Consequently, some people are discovering that they are now sleeping through the night for the first time in like, forever.
It’s no wonder, given what’s happened in the last few weeks.
But is this new relationship we’re having with bone-tired weariness cause for concern?
I see the pandemic’s side effect of more people sleeping more as encouraging, even hopeful. Sleep is good! As a society, Americans have been burning the proverbial candles at both ends for decades which has been great for the companies that make sleeping aids but not so great for everyone else. We aren’t meant to live that way for years on end. Once in a while, it’s okay to pull an all-nighter but to make lack of sleep the de facto method of operation is like being on a collision course with a bull that’s just kicked a hornet’s nest again and again and again.
Now that you’re working from home full time, you may find yourself trying to power through your exhaustion the way you did when you worked outside the home. You may try to stifle yawns because you’re worried about being “found out” or seen as “less than” by members of your community.
That’s normal. I did, too.
In fact, the first few times I took a nap under my desk at school, I worried someone would discover what I was doing.
What if a colleague came into my classroom and found me dead to the world on the floor?
What if my principal needed to talk to me about a student and discovered I was using my free period not to grade papers or plan the rest of the week’s activities, but to grab some much-needed shut-eye so that I could perform my job effectively?
I’m not sure when not sleeping more than a couple of hours each night became synonymous with being cool or essential to the next big exit strategy. I have always loved sleeping and prize those 7-9 hours I get as much as I cherish my two children. It’s no surprise that getting enough sleep is the secret weapon of some of the most innovative and successful people around. Bill Gates, LeBron James, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah don’t scrimp on the shut-eye and have managed quite nicely.
If you’re feeling bone-tired, see it as a sign that you’re adjusting to new conditions. You may discover in the process that sleep is more important to you than you once imagined, making changes to your priorities so that you can continue getting plenty of it when (if?) things return to some semblance of what they were like before the pandemic.
If anything, allow yourself to take a nap after lunch or between Zoom meetings should you feel your eyelids getting heavy. No one cares. Sleep is good. The “You Must Work All the Time and Like It” police are not going to pound down your door and force you to lift your head off your desk.
Be so bold as to designate a specific quiet time in the middle of the day for the whole house so you can close your eyes long enough to feel refreshed when you open them again.
It could be the best gift you give yourself this year.
= = = = =
Right now, you’ve got time to explore that creative project (Book? Podcast? Online Course?) you’ve put on the back burner…
…and would love to talk through your idea with someone who gets it. Schedule an online session with me and let’s come up with a plan that you can use in the coming months.
