I was editing a 30-page paper that needed about 30 hours to do properly. I've been running on 4 hours a sleep per night for the last few weeks (which is not enough for me). At 3:30 AM, I had only gotten to page 15 on my first lookthrough. I said that it was good enough, saved my work, and went to sleep. If it was a life-or-death situation, I probably could have forced myself to finish that editing, or at least get through all the pages once. But maybe not.
All I know for sure is that I could not have squeezed 30 hours of work into a single evening. I couldn't squeeze 30 hours of work into a full day. I can do a lot. So can you. When something simply has to be done and we pull out all the stops, we can achieve truly remarkable things.
However, no matter how much you can actually do when push comes to shove, there is a limit. That limit is when the body and/or mind completely fails due to stress and exhaustion. It's hard to conceive of how much you have to do to reach that limit, but know that it is there. The more things you do, the more you will know what your limit is. If you actually meet that limit, take a long break and try as hard as you can to never have to reach that limit again.
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I ran on 3-4 hrs sleep for a few days, with 16 hr days of work + school.
ReplyDeleteBy day 3 I was physically tired. when we get tired, it's usually just our mind wanting to take a break. It can only take in information for so long before it just needs sleep to process everything. But we are not *truly* tired at this point. It's more than possible to stay up for 3-4 days if not longer. Soldiers do this all the time.