To sleep or not to sleep...

At what point is it pointless to sleep? At some level, you will likely feel more tired if you do sleep than if you don't.

If you stay up all night until 5am and need to wake up at 8am to be in the office by 9am, should you sleep? What if you get two hours of sleep? One hour? What is your personal minimum?

 

I definately agree with you that there is a point where sleep actually can hinder you, however in my experience its usually more than just one "tipping" point. For example if I sleep 8 hours I'm usually tired when I wake up, when I sleep 7 hours I am not tired... etc.

I don't think its the same for everyone, but you should probably know yourself by now... especially if you are still in college or have gone through college (countless all nighters, or little sleep on average in a week).

 
Best Response

I always slept when I could. You have to make sure that you set multiple alarm clocks or have friends wake you up if you're planning on taking a nap, but I've done no sleep and 30 minutes to 1 hour of sleep and it's amazing how much better you feel with a tiny bit of sleep under your belt (worth the risk if you are willing to take it). Also, it's a no brainer but anything you predict having to do the next morning (making copies of memos for conference calls, sending out emails, etc.) just do the night before just in case you wake up 15 minutes later than you originally planned and are rushing to the office.

One time, I was working on a project but had a seperate (very important credit meeting including heads of IBD) meeting for another live deal at noon the next day. The VP on project 2 told me that I would probably be squeezed out of the credit meeting due to lack of space - plus he was my staffer and knew my workload. I ended up being in the office until about 7 or 8AM on project 1 and almost decided to save printing the credit memos for the next morning in order to get more sleep. Common sense got the best of me and I printed out 20 copies and clipped them and left them in a stack on my desk. I ended up oversleeping and waking up at 12:15 the next day, and quickly fired off an email to the analysts to survey the damage - none of them said the VP on project 2 was mad. When I got into the office, he mentioned he came looking for me and had a moment of panic when I wasn't in my cube, but he saw the stack of memos and just scooped them up and went to the meeting. He was much more pleased with the fact that I had printed the memos than to get mad about me being 4 hours late for work.

 

I actually saw something about how/why sleep is necessary. Your brain works the hardest while you're sleeping. The brain basically goes to work repairing your body and mind while you're asleep. Without sleep you your brain and body will just continue to deteriorate. So I would assume that even though you may feel more tired when you wake up, even an hour of sleep is better than none since your brain could atleast get an hour worth of repairs in, you'll be an hour further away from that 'tipping point' of where you lose your mental facilities.

Not that I work banker hours, but I sleep maybe 4 or 5 hours a night. If I have a lot going on(non-work related), I may not sleep at all, and I still try to squeeze in an hour or 2 of sleep if I can get. I think 3 hours is a no brainer.

 

I agree with what others have said, take what you can get. But similar to what tylerdurden said, I sometimes will do a 30 or 45 minute power nap (e.g. on the couch, with the lights on, and an alarm set across the room) rather than go to bed for an hour or two. This way I get some rest without really getting into "sleep mode" and making myself groggy. I'll also typically sacrifice a bit of sleep time to make sure I have enough time to shower, eat breakfast, etc. to wake myself up.

 

The part about multiple alarm clocks is so true. If you are just sleeping for one hour, it's gonna take a lot more to wake you up. When I was doing my summer, I have 3 alarm clocks - one by my bed, and two placed far away from my bed (this will force me to actually walk there to turn it off, and that usually woke me up). Also get them to go off 10 minutes apart from one another so that if you can't help going back to sleep after the first ring, you will have two backup lines of defense.

A monkey's life is so sad!!!!

 

There was a 1 week period about a year ago where I literally had to sleep in the office for a few days to a week. When I get that tired, alarm clocks stop working... I had to get other people in the office to literally kick me awake.

It's actually a lot harder to pull off all-nighters successfully and wake up on time in banking than it was in college because you don't have as good (any actually) variety in your schedule. I never pulled a week of minimum sleep in college, at most I did a few days here and there. And after I was done I could always go onto something different.

I actually became known for oversleeping after late nights at my office, make sure this doesn't happen to you.

 

Is oversleeping common in banking? I stayed up til 5am a few weeks ago and slept through my first few classes. When I went to bed, I was thinking, "Well, I'm a senior. I know I will get an 'A' in the end, and class really isn't that important. I'll sleep while I have the liberty to sleep." I have always assumed that if I HAD to wake up to go to WORK, I would be more compelled to wake up. I guess I figured oversleeping is considered unacceptable. Are banks more lenient than other employers since they know analysts work so many hours?

So, is oversleeping in banking common? How many times can you oversleep and not face severe consequences?

soul09 - I should know by now, but I don't. I don't have a clue. If I wake up groggy, I don't give it a second thought. I think there are so many factors that go into it: 1) how active I was the day before, 2) did I consume caffeine, 3) if so, how much, 4) if so, how much in the last week, 5) what time of day did I go to bed, etc. I will start paying more attention to my body and maybe I can figure this out before banking.

Endgame - is that a moving alarm clock?

 

Take it when you can get it. You NEVER know how much longer you'll have to be at the office.

On multiple alarm clocks: Over the summer, I would set my cell phone, my blackberry, and an alarm clock. In addition to this, I bought a digital timer to turn a lamp on right in my face 5 minutes before it was time to get up. Worked like a charm.

 

Android alarm clock check Guest room alarm room check Regular alarm room check

still not waking up = fail putting your alarm clock under your bed so you have to find it = fail

word of advice.. i have like 50 alarms on my cell phone from 6AM - 10 AM incase somehow i sleep through them.. unfortunately 50% of the time i take off my batery so i still lose :(

 

My roommate is in banking and does cell, blackberry and clock alarms. I get up about an hour before him and I can hear him snoozing each of them for about an hour (iphone goes off, two min later blackberry goes off, two min later clock goes off, one min later iphone goes off...). All I have to say is- don't do this. He has gotten to the point where he is used to sleeping while the alarms go off. He will snooze these alarms for 45+min and when I ask him about it later he won't even remember. Basically he wastes his last hour of potential deep sleep and completely defeats the purpose of setting multiple alarms. A couple of times he has slept in until ~11am doing this.

Cliff notes: Don't snooze your alarm(s). You get used to them. You also annoy the hell out of your roommate.

"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen."
 

^^^Yea, I got used to my alarms on my phone, had to get unused to them heheh.

Also, how often do people get away with going into work late? I feel like people are bound to oversleep on occasion when theyre working 100 hours in a week

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

I have floor-to-ceiling windows and keep the blinds open during the week. The most effective alarm clock (of course, I set one+blackberry), I'm up at 6 whether I need to be or not. Not the worst thing in the world, I can spend some time reading WSJ or working out then get to work by 8, generally the 1st/2nd person in which I'm sure looks good.

I've never really overslept too badly, even when working late/going out the night before. Latest I got in was at like 9:15 one day but that was because I took a 6:45 conference call from home that ran really, really long. (Thanks, London office.)

I generally don't sleep if I get out of work at 5 or 6 AM unless I can get a solid 2-3 hours in. No reason to, I've done it before and I feel worse than if I hadn't slept. Just take your stimulant of choice and get on with it--I'm a 5hr energy person myself but I'm not oblivious to what other bankers use.

 

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