Ashish KothariMake flourishing your competitive edge

The Truth About Catching Up on Sleep: What You Need to Know #shorts

8 Jan 2025 · 1 min

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0:59

A short monologue (YouTube Short) by Ashish Kothari debunking myths about catching up on sleep and giving practical advice: try to recover sleep as soon as possible (e.g., if you miss sleep on Tuesday, catch up Wednesday); prefer going to bed earlier or taking naps rather than sleeping in; sleeping in is least preferable because deep sleep occurs in the first half of the night and sleeping late shifts the circadian rhythm, producing weekend "social jet lag."

Chapters

I think this one is very common. Let me get my work done during the week and then I will just catch up on the weekend. So I think how these become myths is that of course there's a tiny little bit of truth to it in that some people think that, oh, if I rack up a sleep debt, I can't recover, I can't catch up on sleep anyway, so there's no point in trying. That's not true. You should try to catch up on sleep. So preferably as soon as possible. So if you've had a bad night Tuesday night, then see if you can catch up Wednesday night instead of waiting until the weekend. But if the only option is for you to wait until the weekend, then please get more sleep on the weekend. But what most people do is sleep in in the morning instead. What's more preferable is if you can go to bed a bit earlier or two, if you can take a nap during the day. If neither of those are an option, then go for option three, which is sleeping in in the morning. And why that one is least preferable is that most of your deep sleep is in the first half of the night. So you're very unlikely to get more deep sleep by sleeping in the morning. And the other reason is that when you sleep in in the morning, you're shifting your rhythm, so you're shifting your circadian rhythm and then you can give yourself a social jet lag on the weekend.