Paying with our own welfare

Because everybody knows our time and health are free

Rodrigo Rivera

Picture this familiar scenario; you have an important midterm tomorrow morning and you haven’t really studied yet, like at all, so you decide to open your notes, the class slides, and that handy practice midterm, ready to spend the foreseeable future looking at words and numbers until you feel like you’re prepared for tomorrow’s challenge.

Midterm time comes, and once you’re done and all that test-taking adrenaline has subsided, you’re just left with the aftereffects of your decisions. Still, as you’re dragging yourself to your next class, seriously considering skipping everything else just to sleep a bit longer than 4 hours, you still don’t regret having studied for that midterm the night before, because now you’ll get a higher grade. After all, no one will remember that you didn’t sleep well, but your transcript will remember if you got that B+ instead of that A-.

Why is it that we’re able to so easily disregard our wellbeing for, say, a higher grade, a higher pay, or even just showing up to all of our commitments? What sort of system do we use internally to determine whether we should study an extra hour or sleep for an extra hour? And, most importantly, are we making justice to the value of our wellbeing by paying with it just to achieve better results?

Let me ask you a followup question, when do we stop studying the night before an important exam? Well, we only stop when we believe studying even longer will do us no more good than just sleeping instead. For many, this moment comes when we physically cannot keep going out of exhaustion, and for the really strong ones in the crowd, this means pulling out an all-nighter.

But what does this say about the value we place on our wellbeing and our feelings? I’ll tell you what it says; we humans are masters at underselling our own wellbeing while overestimating our need for tangible results. We just love comparing quantities, and you know what is famously abstract and unquantifiable? That’s right: feelings.

This is not like choosing whether to leave work early and wondering, what do I prefer, 30 dollars or hanging out with my friends (both sound tempting)? In our minds, making these choices is more like, what do I prefer, not turning in my assignment on time (bad), or turning my assignment on time, for free (really good)?

But just as how overtime is not free money, sacrificing our sleep and our health to keep up with our responsibilities is not “free” either; we’re paying with our welfare. And guess what? Our welfare is not infinite, nor is it inconsequential. Of course, there are things we NEED to do. But if we keep on skipping meals, hours of sleep, and relaxation opportunities for the sake of results, there comes a point where our energy, mood, and even sanity are affected.

Unfortunately, there’s this whole culture around sacrifice being needed to achieve anything of value, to the point of having normalized suffering for better results. Don’t believe me? Just look around. This type of thinking is everywhere!

For example, why do you think caffeine products became so widespread? For their taste? Yeah, right. It’s because they allow us to work past our regular limits, maximizing our productivity. Who cares about all the health problems associated with lack of sleep?

We admire those that can go days working non-stop, but only because of the results they demonstrate, not for the work itself. In a kinder world, our society would account for exceptions and breaks whenever we needed them, but we live in a world of results, and we are ruled by this to a painful degree. How many of us won’t do our class readings when they are not graded? How many of us are okay with cheating or easy workarounds, as long as people believe we did things the intended way?

So, what are we meant to do? Stop fulfilling our responsibilities? No, of course not! Trading a bit of sleep for results is not in itself bad. Who here hasn’t stayed up late hooked on a book, or working on a passion project? What we need to do is to make the conscious effort to remember that overexerting ourselves does carry a very real cost. So that, hopefully, our wellbeing may have a fighting chance when we’re weighing whether to take on less responsibilities, or whether to deny ourselves precious hours of sleep.

Even then, if you ever see me staying up until 3 a.m. to finish studying or writing up some magazine article, know it’s because I myself suffer from human irrationality.