How to Act Productive Tip #2 - Talk About How Much You Haven't Slept

Photo by: Al-Fassam [Online! :D]

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

If you think you can be productive and sleep well, you've got another thing coming. Busy people don't sleep. How could they? They're too busy. If you want to be a productive, important person you need to start losing sleep. More important than just your sleeping patterns, however, is your reputation around the office. You don't want people to think you're a lazy, 8-hours a night sleeper. You want them to know just how much you haven't slept in the past week or year. So you need to tell them. Often, it can be awkward simply inserting a sentence about your lack of sleep mid-conversation. So you must learn to be adept at more subtle tricks: "Yeah, that really was a good game last night, so what did you do afterwards?" "Went to bed" "Oh, that must have been nice. I was up till 4 working on the TPS reports." "Really? Wow..." You see, your lack of sleep impresses and inspires people. Maybe your friend will think twice the next time she plans on simply going to bed after the game.

A more advanced trick is to cite multiple-day averages instead of just a single night. Why? Because many people lose sleep every once in a while, but really important people don't sleep on a consistent basis. You need have these numbers on hand for when someone else tries to seem harder-working than you. Often, inserting a little sympathy in your phrasing can really make you sound like a winner: "Man, on Tuesday, I was up till 4 working on the TPS reports." "Oh, I hear you, that must have been rough. I've slept maybe 20 hours in the past week." "Total?!" "Yeah, total." "Woah..."

So this week, try to work more and sleep less. But if that's hard, don't worry about it, just make sure you tell people how little you've slept.