All work and no sleep make a tech bro dull. During our morning devotion today, my mom kept hammering for my elder brother to add weight, get regular hair cuts, reduce caffeine intake and sleep like a normal human being. Trust her to make sure we all screamed ‘amen’ to her prayers as it is a typical African reflex action to respond no matter how funny it sounded unless you are ready to collect free customized quality slaps as morning motivation.
It is funny that little basic things like this were added as prayer points but I can’t blame her as Daniel, the family coding guru was always looking like someone tired of life. Apart from his fat bank account, his melanin was not exactly popping as he hardly ever sleeps!!
The impact of sleep has over the years been undermined in our day-to-day activities. The more we advance in life, the more we want to do more and the more we sleep less.
In the United States, Africans have been studied to show a higher prevalence of short sleep compared to other ethnic groups. This genetic mechanism has made sleep disorders more prevalent in Africans working in the tech ecosystem. Health practitioners have always emphasized the need for 7-8 hours of sleep per night for adults between the ages of 18-64 but the need to hustle and secure the bag in the tech space has overridden the idea of sleep for many tech bros.
Just so you know, sleep doesn’t portray laziness. Well, too much is harmful but nothing justifies a lack of sleep. Many tech bros do not understand the intricacies of their sleep patterns. As a tech bro, the ecosystem has placed you at a disadvantage of having to deal with gadgets radiation that delays or reduces sleep and oftentimes, causes headaches and fatigue.
In light of this, a layman would think that a tech bro should put conscious measures in place to ensure that an adequate amount of sleep is gotten. But do tech bros sleep? No, they don’t!!
I have come across many tech bros who take pride in giving themselves the title “night owl”. Very funny, but ehmmm Mr night owl, do you at least sleep during the day too? Or your owl also “hoots” during the day.
As much as your body clock should be respected, you should also respect your health by creating a balance between sleep and work.
The reason many tech bros deprive themselves of sleep is that they believe (without conducting appropriate research) that you are productive when you sit with your device all hours of the day and consider sleep as a total waste of time but in the actual sense: your body and your mind demand sleep. Sleep is not a want or desire.
Sleep is a necessity. It is mandatory. Your relevance in the tech ecosystem needs sleep because your productivity at work demands it.
Sleep deprivation has been found to lead to lower alertness and concentration reducing your ability to perform tasks that require creative and logical thinking. For example, coding requires that you are quick to think and that you possess a high level of concentration, not getting the required amount of sleep hampers your thinking ability and puts your “thinking cap” in hibernation.
If you want to “blow”(Nigerian slang for succeeding) in the tech ecosystem, then you need to forget the gainsayings of “tech bros don’t sleep”, turn off your gadget and sleep. Take a break and take a nap.
