Slackershot: Fatigue Last night the main sewer line at the house backed up around 10:30 PM, which necessitated a call to Roto Rooter. 4 1/2 hours and $354.73 later, the sewer line was clear (plumber: “Don’t use Charmin. It clogs up everything. I know people like soft toilet paper for their ass, but that’s an expensive habit.”) and the clock struck three – which meant that it was literally 124 minutes before the alarm was scheduled to go off.

So this morning I sit very carefully at my desk, ensuring that I don’t work on any systems vital to the company, because two hours of sleep makes you exceptionally prone to critical mistakes – you know, the “hey, did I just format the hard drive of our web server?” kind. Making sure that on my docket for the day is nothing mission critical.

However, extreme fatigue does have its merits. I tend to think a lot more creatively and non-linearly when I’m over-tired, because my brain just operates differently in a low-sleep state. Sometimes really neat ideas that I’d never create fully rested come out, and I jot those down. When I’m rested, they can be refined and tuned up, but the raw materials are still good.

That’s the other important thing – overly fatigued essentially brings with it a variant of attention deficit and short term memory loss, so if you have good ideas, it’s super important to be near an input device – phone, keyboard, notepad, etc. – because those ideas will vanish FAST.

Some thoughts on a Wednesday morning.

Subscribe to My Free Weekly Newsletter

Subscribe to My Free Weekly Newsletter

Sign up now to the free Almost Timely Newsletter, released every weekend with the latest news about marketing, technology, analytics, data science, and AI.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

You have successfully subscribed to the Almost Timely Newsletter!