02 Mar 2017

It’s past midnight and you’re tapping away at your laptop trying to smash out the essay that’s due in eight hours. You probably had an early start, for work or school, and you didn’t get to come home afterwards, instead rushing to an afternoon shift or team training or a study session.

Odds are you were home late and this is your only chance to finish off that last thousand words. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, you know you’re spewing out arguments that don’t make sense, but it’s better than nothing and you have to get it done.

Never mind that you’re running on so little sleep that if you sit down for too long you’ll nod off, or that you’re so exhausted that you’re snapping at your family when they ask innocent questions about your day.

It doesn’t matter that when you finally get to bed at three in the morning that your mind is still buzzing, caffeine is still pumping in your blood and you lay with your eyes wide open.

None of that matters, because if you can slap the essay down on your teacher’s desk, or smash out a training session with your coach, or squeeze in that late shift at work then you’re a success.

As students, we’re told to cram in so much; hours and hours of study, extra-curricular activities, sport and work. We’re told we have to keep pushing and pushing because if you’re not busy you must be slacking off, right?

If you’re not suffering from exhaustion, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. If you’re not piling yourself up with responsibilities and events, then you’re not fulfilling your potential and you’ll never be successful.

The weird thing is, we know that rest and looking after our body is so important. We are taught to get a minimum of eight hours sleep, two litres of water and thirty minutes of exercise a day. But we’re constantly putting ourselves under the pressure to perform to our absolute maximum and beyond. Pushing and pushing and pushing…until we can’t.

We crash. We burn. We break down and cry. We collapse under the crushing weight of everything. We fall asleep in class and hand in essays late.

We spend hours lying in bed, staring at the ceiling because four in the morning is the only time it’s acceptable to be doing nothing. We exhaust ourselves to the point of burnout.

We value being busy because we assume it means being productive and successful. We surround ourselves with ‘inspirational’ quotes about pushing ourselves to the limit or how we need a shot of caffeine to get ourselves through the day.

We look at the people who are doing a million things at once like some sort of superheroes and we use our lack of sleep as badges of how important we are.

But we need to realise that there is nothing healthy about the physical or mental state of exhaustion. Aligning success with being busy is slowly killing us.

We have to understand that saying we need a break is not admitting defeat. Asking for a lighter load is not something to be ashamed of. So, put down your study notes and the essay you’re frantically trying to memorise. Tell your boss you need to cut down on shifts.

Drop the extra class you don’t need to be doing. Go to sleep. Give yourself a chance to take a breath and take a break. Because when you hit that breaking point, when you begin to splinter and crack, all the praise, all the awards and all the achievements will mean nothing.