About A Good Night's Rest
Tags: developers, health, routines, sleep
Published: 2019-03-12 21:28:40

---
title: About A Good Night's Rest
published: true
description: This is a small article on the importance of a good night's rest.
tags: developers, health, routines, sleep
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/1k3om88crcdo9ytjhqsl.png
canonical_url: https://www.shipharder.com/about-a-good-nights-rest/
---

Don't underestimate the power of sleeping on your product idea one night. A good night's rest is a powerful thing for people who need to use their big brain 🧠 muscles to get things done all day long.

That sleep is good for your health, is common knowledge by now. If you don't get enough sleep, it can make you fat and you have an increased chance to get heart diseases.

But there are more things to consider why you should get enough sleep.

## 1. Sleep Over It A Night 🛏+1️⃣

The pillow in the header image resembles a nice reminder of how giving the product that you're making a little thought can lead to a better experience. 

Sleep a night on your idea, then shipping makes sure you don't put it out there too hard (on the other side: one night is not the same as procrastinating until eternity).

After a night of quality sleep and waking up, I often find that I get new insights for a solution, an idea or a problem that I was thinking about the day before.

## 2. Don't Be A Jerk Because You Don't Go To Bed On Time😠

I find myself to be grumpy, and an awfully slow person when I don't get a fair amount of sleep. I can't process things correctly and I really get oversensitive sometimes. 

The mood during work time (and at home) is often doomed to be less positive.
That isn't something I willingly want to inflict to the people in my life.

That's why having a good sleeping habit like going to bed on a fixed time to get that amount of sleep that you need isn't really only about caring for yourself. It is about caring for the people in your (personal and professional) life, too. 

## 3. Sleep Deprivation Makes You Dumb (literally) 🤤

As [a study back in 2017](https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.4433.epdf?referrer_access_token=C_57adLpXNo9f0789gLULNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PVLfGJQWVJrXNDxzTPEk-Ls4nLgXJY8ZNRU-zoYiOZnixC_9m4xHFRMmne2-0wm85c51NzD5L9MC_gamL-PBiwJJiKk_MleWU776e3fCmLyeq0dYIgY9SE48m7TGgJgQzOGZEArzl8_hHISCg0_iGgU5Jqnbl6s7RzJEPpQlXsvw%3D%3D) showed, sleep deprivation leads to cognitive lapses. During those lapses, you are less capable of reasoning at your normal level, your sensory capabilities are decreased and your memory will decline.

(You can check out the more human readable version on Menshealth, [here](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19541502/sleep-loss-study-memory-concentration-ucla/))

In other words: your concentration will go down the drain.

Sounds like a lot of things in there that would be useful for us to get the most out of our day, right?

## It's Not That Big Of A Deal, Really 🤷🏻‍♂️

As a Tech Lead I do so much to keep myself fit while working for hours behind a (retina) computer screen:
- Wearing computer glasses with a "blue filter"
- Sport every week and train my back muscles and stretch to prevent aches
- I eat healthily and food that energizes me
- Drinking enough water to keep hydrated

And while I know that feeling of "there aren't enough hours in a day, I need to finish x, y, and z", it really isn't a valid reason to deprive yourself of a good night's sleep.

## Just Sleep 😩👉🏻🛏

You owe it to yourself, your idea, your project, your colleagues and/or partners and your (future) users to give them the best of you. They all deserve you at maximum capacity and will not get it if you keep pushing your physical limits and keep coding, building, creating...and not taking enough sleep.

**UPDATED March 19th: The American National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has a nice visual of the amount of sleep a person should have:**

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/uhbpdzx06hgp600n0t25.png)

Speaking of which, it's 22:09 CET+1 Amsterdam time. Time to go dive in.

** End of update**

I'm needed to kick ass again, tomorrow 🛌 + 💤 = ⚡️+ 😄 + 💪🏻

ps: yes the pillow is available 😅 >> [check it out here](https://teespring.com/stores/shipharder)
ps2: Code Hard, Ship Harder (and sleep some in between!) - [Shipharder.com](https://www.shipharder.com)

_This post is also [published on Shipharder.com](https://www.shipharder.com/about-a-good-nights-rest/)_