Stop Glorifying Undersleeping!

“Bas do ghante neend mili hai aaj.”

It is the ultimate badge of honor exchanged over late-night chai at 2:00 AM or typed into university group chats shortly before dawn. In Pakistan’s fast-paced corporate and academic circles, we have quietly built a culture that mistakes performative exhaustion for genuine ambition. Getting four hours of sleep is rarely viewed as a failure of planning or healthy boundaries—instead, it is proudly displayed as proof that you are hustling harder than everyone else.

This mindset spans across generations and industries. Students wear their all-nighters like medals during finals season. Young freelancers and corporate employees boast about answering WhatsApp messages at midnight, while workplace cultures routinely equate late office hours with loyalty. In urban hubs across the country, fueled by endless cups of strong tea, cigarettes, and energy drinks, a quiet consensus has emerged: rest is for the unmotivated.

Yet, science has long dismantled the romanticized myth of the sleepless achiever. Sleep is not a passive state where the brain turns off; it is an active, vital process of cognitive maintenance, memory consolidation, and cellular repair. When you cut your sleep short, the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the region responsible for executive function, emotional regulation, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving—suffers immediate degradation.

Neuroscientific studies consistently show that regularly getting less than six hours of sleep per night reduces cognitive performance to levels equivalent to being legally intoxicated. You may feel like you are pushing through on sheer willpower, but your brain is actually operating in a compromised state, making poorer decisions and taking longer to process basic information.

Beyond the immediate cognitive drop, the long-term health tax is severe. Chronic sleep deprivation is directly linked to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, weakened immune function, metabolic disruption, and severe anxiety disorders. In a society where mental health resources are already strained, encouraging young professionals and students to systematically wreck their physical and mental well-being for short-term output is a recipe for widespread burnout.

Furthermore, the idea that under-sleeping leads to greater productivity is a fundamental economic paradox. Sleep-deprived workers do not produce superior results; they produce slower, more error-prone work that often requires correction later. The extra three hours spent staring sluggishly at a laptop screen at 3:00 AM are routinely offset by the brain fog, reduced creativity, and mood instability that dominate the following day. We end up spending twelve exhausted hours doing work that a well-rested mind could have executed brilliantly in six.

For corporate leaders, university faculties, and society at large, the imperative is clear: we must stop treating sleep as a luxury or a reward to be earned after the work is finished. High performance requires deliberate, systematic recovery. A workplace or academic institution that respects boundaries, enforces reasonable deadlines, and values cognitive clarity will always outpace one powered by chronic fatigue and performative suffering.

It is time to reframe our daily priorities. True discipline is not about running your body into the ground to prove a point; it is having the maturity to power down so you can deliver your best work tomorrow. Rest is not the reward for a job well done—it is the prerequisite.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sabeen Waqas is a Lahore-based undergraduate student and writer focusing on contemporary academic culture, lifestyle trends, and personal well-being.