Gemma Speck

It's also a way of us allowing this habit of like pushing rest down to continue.

If you don't feel dramatically worse, you assume you can keep going and going.

But what of course, like studies like this is showing us is that you are just pushing the, like the problem

Further down the line.

And you've got to pay the sleep debt eventually.

You've got to pay your sleep tax, your rest tax eventually.

Now, sleep is like the ultimate form of rest.

It's like an emergency maintenance.

It's emergency maintenance for your brain.

It's consistent maintenance for your brain to clear out clutter, to...

restore itself from damage to store memories and we have a whole episode on the psychology of sleep if you're interested but there's also more broader rest that that's needed in your life resting if you want a definition is like when you don't have to fix your attention on anything when your body can unclench and you're not in a state of vigilance or hypervigilance when you are in a state of vigilance you are not resting when you're in a state of alert and attention you're

you are not resting.

That is the state that I'd say the majority of us are in all the time.

So when you work for long stretches, especially on cognitively demanding tasks, you are spending natural reserves that have built up.

over time of you build like you're using your natural reserves of attentional control, working memory, emotional regulation.

You are taking, taking, taking.

You're going to hit zero.

Those systems get tired.

They get way less efficient.

That is why you can sit at your laptop for an extra two hours and get less done than when you first started in 20 minutes.