[I Tried] Healthier all nighters

Look, nobody plans an all-nighter. And yet, here we are. This episode isn't about celebrating sleep deprivation, it's about damage control when you're already past the point of good decisions. We break down five things that actually help keep you functional through the night, without the classic strategy of mainlining caffeine and stress-eating your way to 6am.

We also call out the most miserable version of an all-nighter, where you're neither sleeping nor working. You know exactly what that feels like.

The five tools: food minimalism (yes, really), music and micro-movement, the hot water trick, strategic napping (including the napuccino, which is exactly what it sounds like), and the one mental reframe that makes the whole night feel less like a slow death. 

No health gurus were harmed in the making of this episode.

00:00 Welcome to Cognidiots

04:24 Why All Nighters Happen

05:47 The Worst Kind of Night

06:40 My Unhealthy All Nighter

09:01 Five Healthier Tools

09:18 Food and Caffeine

10:31 Music and Movement

11:27 Hot Water Hack

12:53 Naps and Napccino

15:00 Manage Your Stories

 

What is Cognidiots | Applied Psychology, Badly?

The research is real. The application is honest. The results are mixed.

Podcast about psychology, behavioral science, emotional intelligence, and ADHD research, applied to the bullshit you encounter daily. By a professional fumbler with a questionable attention span who insists on finding out what the science actually does when you try to use it.

Episode 4 - I tried healthier all nighters
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[00:00:00] If you think you're an idiot, I have two things to say to you. First, I believe you, why would you lie? Second, welcome to the Club. Welcome to Cognit, where being a curious idiot is the job's requirement, not an insult. Whether you're starting at zero, negative 10 or positive 10, the only direction that matters is forward.

I'm not an expert. This is not Cogni smarts. I'm a professional fumbler with a questionable attention span and relentless curiosity, and this is Cognitives.

I haven't gone for a while and I hope you've been well. Good thing right now. I don't have any listeners and I'm talking to a fictional group, and fictional people are always so much more accommodating and understanding than real people. I love you guys for being so understanding about my high desk now.

Look, making a podcast is hard. There's so many active players that are doing such great work where differentiating yourself or trying to create content that is valuable amongst so much [00:01:00] value is difficult. To add to that, I am really bad at this. In fact, I'm so bad. I'm now comparing myself not to the better ones, but to the worst of the worst podcasters, which comparison actually gave me good insight.

I am also a lawyer. When I became a lawyer, I did not get demotivated to practice law just because the legal legals and the pioneers were doing such great work, and I am not there yet. But at the same time. I know for a fact that I am good at what I do, at least in law, not in podcast. And so I've thought even if I'm not creating value at the highest level compared to the highest level of podcasters, I still can create some value, at least for myself.

I know that as a podcaster, I have to come create value for you. I have to say things that are important to you. But the fact is that you don't [00:02:00] exist and I don't know who you are. All I can do is create value for myself, do things, and say things that I would say when nobody's listening, which is the scenario today.

And so I do have a plan to make this podcast something that would be valuable for me. I'm not a billionaire telling people how to get rich. I am not a super athlete telling people what my method is. I am not a genius. I am trying to do something that I like. I'm trying to create something I like and live a life, which I enjoy.

I do have a DHD, so I like a lot of things, but there's some things I would like to stick to and make them my anchors while I do chase my novelty everywhere and anywhere. This podcast for me is a bucket of ideas, tricks, skills, thoughts, and generally perspectives that work for [00:03:00] me, or even if they don't work for me now.

These are things that I hope I inculcate and make my life better. Now, if you followed everything that I've said so far, you know that this is not a science podcast. I am not a doctor either. Please don't take health advice from a podcaster who calls himself an idiot. That will be on you, not on me. With that said, I realized my starting point was pretty low.

I have some very poor health habits. I tend to get carried away with work, and when I do get carried away with work, I lose track of my health. I end up gaining weight. I built up some debt on my body, but that is not something that works, at least not in the long run. One of the things that I have started doing is replacing my unhealthiest habits and poorest practices with things that are slightly better.

I know that some of the things that I will talk about are still not considered [00:04:00] healthy, but at the same time, you don't just wake up one day and start doing everything right. That journey is far more complicated, and so keeping the authenticity of that journey in mind, we need to realize that. Oftentimes we will have to settle for mitigating your losses, then trying to gain profits.

With that said, today's podcast is on a topic that I'm very interested in primarily because this has been one of my poorest practices, which is unhealthy. All-nighters. Look, I'm a lawyer, plus I really care about my clients, so focus or not, I often find myself burning midnight oil. You could be in any profession but have the same problem.

Now, of course, you are fictional. You have whatever problems I need you to have. So today you have the problem of pulling all lighters and it's your lucky day because I have exactly that [00:05:00] for you. First things first, sleep is good for you. Please sleep. I am pretty tired of people boasting about how little they sleep.

I sleep four hours. I sleep three hours, yada yada. If these morons slept for a while, maybe they wouldn't be as exhausting for the rest of us. But what I want to discuss today are tricks for situation that actually require it. Now sometime. This is what life demands. Dreams come at a cost, and so you choose what you put in.

Don't blame me for life choices, but if you are making life choices that require you to pull all-nighters or take physical damage, we should think of ways how we can reduce that damage. Now let's talk about all-nighters. Before I come to the healthier ones, let me talk about the unhealthy ones, the ones I hate and the ones I want to hate.

Now, the ones I hate, the only one I truly hate and don't judge [00:06:00] me here. Other ones that don't get the job done. You have a draft, you ate too much, you kept on s, losing your alarm every 15 minutes. If you've experienced anything like this, you know what I'm talking about. You neither slept, nor did you get your job done.

You ended up being a zombie. I know it technically does not even qualify as an all-nighter, but I would be guilty of suppression if I did not bring this up. In fact, despite my learning and despite having so many poor experiences with it, this perhaps is one of the most common form of me ruining my night.

So that's what I hid. Now, what do I want to hit? I recently had an all-nighter where I had to complete a practically impossible task. The states were very high, and I had one perspective. I need to do it, whatever it takes. So I did whatever it takes. I ate a lot of calories, not in one go. Of course, that would make me sleep, but basically every time my glucose will start dropping, I would [00:07:00] start eating enough to keep it at a high.

I ate minus and did not care about what I was doing to my body. I also had caffeine every three years. That is obvious. I was stimulated and mildly high the entire night, partly because of the rush of the impossible tasks and the stakes at hand, and partly because of the food and caffeine. At the end of the night, I achieved my target and what a night it was.

I loved the rush, and of course I loved the mammo task I completed, which was nuts. I also love the height that I got from the food and caffeine and the sleep deprivation. I know you were not expecting me to bring an unhealthy night and say, oh, I loved it, but let's understand one thing, bad habits. Even the worst habits or worst practices, they stick because they work.

If you tried food and caffeine and it's never worked, why would you ever [00:08:00] do that again? But you still do it because it can work. In that moment, even if shortsighted, whatever you have to get done, you can get that done. So it just becomes a very high price or debt to body for achieving what you want to achieve at that time.

It's like burning yourself to bodily limits, because tomorrow does not matter, but tomorrow does matter, and this takes a heavy toll on your body and exposes you to massive risk. Let's put that in perspective once. You are not at the risk of repeating something that is not doing anything for you. The reason why we end up getting caught in poor decisions repetitively or poor habits is because they work, at least in the short term, all they're doing something for us.

At the very least, they're giving us pressure. We don't repeat things that our brain finds to be [00:09:00] worthless. With all this context set up and now that we are on the same page that I'm not giving health advice, what are the five things I did slightly better in my healthier all nighter? Some of the things I will talk about are fairly obvious, but we don't need creative solutions for things that work.

So here we go first, food and caffeine. If possible. Don't eat anything. If you have to eat something, have the smallest of bites, but generally, fasted state is a lot better. Ultimately, I believe when it comes to the food part, it's about stabilizing your glucose. I was wearing a glucose monitor in both of those nights.

Uh, when I was doing this experiment in the night where I was keeping my glucose high, I was still eating around the same time when my glucose was about to crash. And in the night when I was not eating, my glucose generally remains stable, which then I kept stable by maybe having a nut or two. [00:10:00] If I absolutely needed it, but I just kept it straight with respect to caffeine.

Caffeine can be useful. I still use caffeine quite actively, but at the same time, you have to be aware if you are sleep deprived and if you did not sleep the night before, the effect of caffeine would be a little more aggravated. It can increase your heart rate and generally be counterproductive. We'll talk about caffeine 'cause I, I do have some useful use of caffeine in any scenario.

For the second trip, we will cover two things together. One is music and the other is movement. The reason why I want to cover them together is almost everyone knows about them. Electronic music, osat, whatever floats your boat, that will help you stay up. Also, pushups and walking around, moving a little will help you stay up.

Of course, you can't push it too far. If you start listening to lyrical music or if you start [00:11:00] going for one hour walks, that will break your flow. That will affect your focus on momentum. It may still keep you up, but it'll not get the job done. So there is some balance perhaps to think about, but these are activities that are the most obvious tools that everyone who has all-nighters is either already aware of or should be aware of.

And now let's come to the more useful ones. Number three, water, specifically hot water. Water is your friend. Water was always your friend. Often when we have to stay up at night, just having a lot of water will wake you up. In fact, hot water helps us in two ways. One is the hot part of it. Just a temperature alone is enough to make you alert.

You don't have to actually have a hot coffee to wake up at night. If you just have hot water. That itself will make you a [00:12:00] little more alert. The second thing is if you have a lot of water at night, that will spike up your cortisol just a little. I know spiking up cortisol is not great, but spiking of cortisol through water is much more control than spiking of cortisol by having too much caffeine at night.

So. Effectively just by having a lot of hot water, a lot of water, while you will stay generally relaxed, you will stay alert and awake. You may have to pee a lot, but you will not crash. For me, I think if there's one thing that I thought was too obvious to miss and yet so powerful, it was just having a lot of water all through my sleep deprivation.

Which was the most dramatic change in my experience of all-nighters. Talking about dramatic experience, we come to number four, which is well-planned Naps. When is NAP a good [00:13:00] idea? When is nap? Not a good idea? I think it depends on the previous state of recovery. I'm also wearing a whoop device. When I had back to back sleep deprivation and my recovery on my whoop was low, I realized.

Napping was something that was just suicidal. If I had to continue on a long night, I would go on a nap and then waste the night. Generally, if your glucose level is also dropping and you nap at that time, probably a bad idea. It'll be hard for you to wake up. The ideal timeframe for a nap is also linked to a circadian rhythm.

20 minutes is perfect. If you take some time to relax after you lie down, maybe you can set your timer for 30 minutes, 'cause that'll still leave you with 20 minutes of resting time. But that's generally a good nap time. If I have to take longer naps or shorter sleeps, I still go [00:14:00] for 90 minute batches because that's what helped me with my.

Rhythm. I think that avoids me being woken up in my deep sleep states, but that is something that we will discuss at length in a different episode because her kidney rhythm can be an important factor in waking up well. Well, the best thing that I've come across, which has been the most effective solution for me for pulling allnighters is a nap ccino.

That is you have a black coffee and then you immediately go for a nap. How does it work? Caffeine takes 20 to 25 minutes to kick in and once you wake up, the benefits of the caffeine and benefits of the nap hit at the same time. And my God, that is like a fresh start. Every time I've done an Pacino, I have successfully completed an all night dog with getting my work done, which brings us to the number five and the final part of this to-do list.[00:15:00]

This one compared to the actionable things that we were talking about is almost rhetorical, but trust me, it is actionable. Manage your stories. Look, we don't talk about it enough, but when your sleep deprived, your willpower is low, your control will be low. The chances of you getting overwhelmed will be high if you are driven by anxiety at that stage.

That would only make things worse. Ultimately, your night has to stay effective, and for that, you have to stay driven. In fact, every time when you're pushing yourself harder than you need to, your drive and your motivation matters. Now, I am not saying you need to be motivated, but the story matters in all the all-nighters that I have done when I was driven by just a deadline, it was.

Something that got increasingly difficult [00:16:00] as every hour passed, but when I was driven by doing something stimulating or the story was that I am doing something that is so hard or stimulating or important for what I have to do, that significantly changed my motivation and alertness and energy levels through the night.

The task was not all that different, but the story about the task was. That positive experience itself can allow an elevated experience to go towards excitement rather than anxiety, which again, it doesn't sound as actionable, but trust me, if you just learn how to reframe a story of an elevated experience or an urgent experience, the physiological reactions for anxiety or excitement can be similar.

Your night can get a lot more exciting. These are the five tricks or five tools for having a [00:17:00] healthier all-nighter, at least healthier than you might be having right now. All of these things are actually backed by science, but I don't want this to become a podcast where I'm discussing theory or papers.

You can do that. Research yourself. I've tried them, worked for me, and I've read the papers behind them and I am sure they work. With this, we come to the end. I hope you got something actionable and useful out of this episode and look forward to seeing you next time.

That is the episode. Thank you so much for your time and I hope that the discussion was valuable for you. Cote is a community. If you have something you are curious about or something you feel Cote should cover, please send them to [e-mail]. Chances are if you are curious about it, so am I.

Feedback is also welcome. Stay curious. See you soon.