Time to ungrind

Most creative thinkers say a good night’s sleep, a quiet walk, and even stepping away from the project for a while are way better ways to be creative than staying up mindlessly grinding. That’s true for architects and engineers, physicists and doctors, and, of course, writers and artists. Lack of sleep eats away at our ability to think through processes and concepts.

Lack of sleep isn’t just hurting our creativity—it’s killing our productivity, too. With packed schedules and too much to get done, some people try to power through, pulling all-nighters and cramming. But there’s tons of evidence to show that we are least productive when we tackle projects like this. So we end up doing less by trying to do more.

So what is all of this lack of sleep and all those energy drinks doing to our bodies? Stress and sleep deficiency are directly linked to depression, which just makes all these issues worse. We feel like we aren’t doing enough, or we aren’t grinding hard enough, and we look for unhealthy ways to get things done.