We said we [hearted] them before. And we still do. We especially [heart] this post: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor.
As they note:
“Software development is rarely a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s multiple marathons, actually. So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal. You end up with just 77% of your available peak. What a bad trade.”
You could substitute “business” for “software development” and that statement still holds true. It’s just common sense. Enough sleep = better performance. Ask any tired, overworked individual at any company and they’ll tell you if they got a little more sleep, they would be a lot more effective.
So why doesn’t common sense prevail? The problem is that one person’s common sense doesn’t stand a chance against the culture of a workplace. When managers reward employees for showing “dedication” by coming in early and working late, then the company will make those bad trades that the 37Signals blog talks about. As long as your work culture honors people putting in hours rather than people driving results, then sleep deprivation will always be a badge of honor.
We are reminded of a line from Men in Black (quote is courtesy the Internet Movie Database) when Will Smith’s character asks Tommy Lee Jones’ character why the truth about aliens living among us must be kept from the general public.
Will Smith: “Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.”
Tommy Lee Jones: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
