Hey there,
It's Renee Noah-Harris here and today I would like to chat about what I imagine has been a pretty universal experience for all of us at one point or another.
Where you've been exhausted all day thinking,
I can't wait to get into bed.
And then you finally do,
And your body is tired and your eyes are tired,
But your brain feels wide awake.
Maybe replaying conversations,
Planning,
Remembering,
Maybe even nothing in particular.
Whatever it is,
It can be very confusing to feel both exhausted and awake.
But here's the thing to your body.
Being tired and being ready to sleep aren't actually the same thing.
And to understand what's happening here,
We're going to take a quick dive into that big,
Beautiful brain of yours.
Now,
There are a lot of systems involved in sleep and wakefulness,
But for today,
We are going to look at one small region of your brain and two of the signals it receives.
First,
The brain region,
Your hypothalamus.
This is a small area deep inside of your brain that plays an important role in coordinating whether you maintain wakefulness or transition towards sleep.
And,
If you imagine your brain like a company,
Like we do for all of the Brain On videos,
I want you to think of your hypothalamus as facilities management.
At the end of every day,
Facilities helps transition a building from we are open for business to we are closed for the night.
But before they can do that,
Before facilities can help make that transition,
It needs information.
About what's happening in the rest of the building.
And that is where we get the two signals.
The first signal.
In sleep pressure.
Now,
Sleep pressure naturally builds the longer you have been awake.
And in company terms,
You can just think how long have the employees been working today?
If they have been there since 6am and it is 10pm.
They are probably exhausted.
They're probably packing their bags.
They are probably ready to go home.
So facilities get this very clear message.
The employees are done.
Let's close the building.
But here is where the second signal comes in.
Arousal.
Arousal meaning how activated or alert is your brain and body.
And here is where wired and tired starts to make sense because you can have high sleep pressure.
And high arousal at the same time.
In company terms.
Your employees might be absolutely exhausted.
While the company is still doing business,
While emails are coming in,
While there are problems to be solved for you,
This might mean that you've had a stressful day that you're still processing.
Or rehearsing something mentally for tomorrow.
Or maybe you've been working with emails or scrolling right up until bed,
So while your employees are saying,
We are exhausted,
Send us home.
The rest of the building is saying.
We are apparently still open for business.
And then sometimes in this added layer of trickiness,
Once you're in bed,
Sleep itself.
Becomes another source of activity.
You're trying to sleep and you notice you're still awake so you check the clock and it's 11 42 when you think okay if i fall asleep right now i can get five hours and 18 minutes of sleep I really have to sleep until you try harder.
And then you keep checking again because you notice you haven't fallen asleep.
And you keep calculating how exhausted you are going to be tomorrow.
But from a facilities management perspective.
All you're doing is scheduling an emergency meeting.
About why the building hasn't closed yet.
So now,
Instead of reducing activity,
You've accidentally created more of it.
You have created more arousal.
And this is why trying really hard to fall asleep can sometimes do the exact opposite of what you want it to do.
So if you're wired and tired,
The goal is not to force facilities to close the building.
You cannot command yourself to fall asleep,
Sadly.
But you can reduce arousal,
You can reduce some of the activity keeping the company open.
Now before bed,
That might mean dimming the lights,
Stepping away from work,
Not scrolling,
Or creating a simple evening routine that brings you into the present,
A meditation,
A shower,
A walk.
And then once you're in bed,
As best as possible,
Try to stop giving sleep another job to do.
So less clock checking,
Less calculating,
Less pressure of having to fall asleep right now,
Because when you're wired and tired,
You actually don't need to make yourself more tired.
Remember your sleep pressure is already high.
You need to give your brain less arousal.
You need to give it fewer signals to stay awake.
In company terms,
You need to give your facilities management team clearer signals that the workday is over.
