I stumbled upon the below Ted Talk that addresses the damage with not getting enough sleep. Similar to many, I pulled some very late nights in IB. Moving onto PE, I'm doing the same thing but with probably 2x the stress as well. It all seemed OK at first because one hopes it is the temporary pain necessary to learn and establish the foundation, but I have been increasingly getting worried about the underlying damage and feel like my brain is burnt out and not retaining anything. I have found not sleeping a "cheat code" to getting more work done and it's worked brilliantly. But there is a cost to everything (no free lunch). It scares the shit out of me to think that there's permanent damage if I keep this up for another 2 years.
This is likely a broader conversation on not being good or fast enough (although the workload is still massive). Work is getting done and it's right, but I'm starting to get comfortable that this shit just isn't worth it. Curious to others thoughts on if this is just scare tactics / weak stuff as I have been debating where value comes in life and the balance after a few years in IB / PE (health, time, money, relationships)
https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_sleep_is_your_superpower?language=en
I'll toss in my .02 as someone who thinks about sleep every day. I structure my work to do everything I possibly can to do to get 8 hours of sleep. There are times when it's not possible but once you get in the habit of getting 8h of sleep per night, you feel really good all the time and you are generally pretty happy, able to cope well with change and the generally extremely unpleasant working conditions of PE, and able to do more than just "get the numbers right". I didn't watch your Ted Talk but have read a good amount of the literature on sleep and while there's still a lot of question marks, it's increasingly clear that there are myriad health consequences from a lack of sleep. If you were to offer me 7h sleep + 45 minutes exercise or 8h of sleep, I would take the latter all day every day (though ideally would also have exercise + 8h sleep).
Tl;dr, agree with you
All I can say is: it’s your health.
Functions of sleep include memory consolidation and cleaning out accumulated metabolic waste. Blood cleans out the rest of your body in real time but not your brain. During sleep your brain metabolism slows down, produces less waste, and the neurons contract to allow interstitial fluid to flow through to wash out waste and replenish nutrients. Sleep is essentially recharging your brain battery, and the mechanics of this were only understood in 2013. When I read about it, I left finance for consulting…to me it’s not worth the literal brain damage from prolonged sleep deprivation.
Also, you actually need to sleep twice a day. The natural sleep pattern is called segmented sleep: a few hours of deep sleep and then wakefulness for an hour or two, followed by lighter sleep. Millions of people think they have insomnia when in fact they’re just experiencing REAL sleep, it boggles the mind. This Ted talk is a great introduction to the subject, and it also changed my life:
Again….it’s your health