Scholarly Sleeping

On February 3, 2014, in Being a GA/TA, Monday Motivation, Think About It, by gregorynpaziuk

A while ago, we stumbled upon this funny infographic, “The Good and Bad Habits of Smart People”, shared by Kathleen Davis. All jokes aside, the creators at Online-PHD-Programs.org made sure to include two separate warnings in profiling the behaviour of smart people:

Follow in the footsteps of some of the world’s smartest people. Just make sure you only pick up their GOOD habits.

…and later, more sternly…

REMEMBER. WHILE EXTREME INTELLIGENCE HAS SOME NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. EXHIBITING THESE TRAITS WILL NOT MAKE YOU SMARTER!

Chances are, however, that most of us busy GAs and TAs have already picked up one of the worst of those bad habits shared by so many smart people: the tendency to deprive ourselves of sleep. We’re not going to give you a bedtime, but every scholar owes it to him/her self to be informed on the sleep issues. With that in mind, we present the following perspectives on sleep in today’s Motivation Monday:

Healthy Sleeping

There are a number of professional bodies studying sleep in both Canada and the United States. Here in Canada, the Canadian Sleep Society works to inform people on sleep disorders, including everything from drowsy driving to sleep and depression. South of the border, the National Sleep Foundation has its own set of “Healthy Sleep Tips”. Among those tips, the Foundation recommends cutting out naps from your daily routine:

A power nap may help you get through the day, but if you find that you can’t fall asleep at bedtime, eliminating even short catnaps may help.

 

Famous Sleepers

The “Good and Bad Habits” doesn’t begin to capture how odd some successful people are about sleep. Many seem to have little regard for the advice of experts. For instance, Winston Churchill and Leonardo da Vinci were both prodigious nappers. Nikola Tesla, meanwhile, reputedly never slept more than two hours per night. Vivian Giang notes these and other examples of famously successful sleepers in her article “11 Bizarre Sleeping Habits of Highly Successful People”.

 

Academic Sleepers

While the best advice of well-informed researchers and some odd practices of successful people are useful perspectives on sleep, perhaps the most interesting study of sleep as it relates to productivity comes from Maria Popova’s article, Famous Writers’ Sleep Habits vs. Literary Productivity, Visualized. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any concrete trends here, but it’s useful to know that you can sleep in and still be as productive as Gertrude Stein.

 

 

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