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.
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