Sleep, concentration, work and happiness

(Originally posted on Tuesday, 7 August 2018)

“The act of creation saves us from despair” is a phrase that is similar to what is running in my head: “work ennobles you and make you happy”. It all comes down to the fact that no matter how bad you feel any useful thing you do makes you feel a little better. The problem is that really depressed people don’t want to do anything, having trouble supplying their most basic needs, which makes them even more unhappy. A vicious cycle.

By work I mean any work – also a job. Any job is useful on its own, because it gives you a way to earn money to pay bills for services and goods necessary for you and/or your family. But there are many other things that are useful for you and/or your family that are free, but require your own work. Pretty obvious? Well, it turns out it is not.

Why so many people work very hard, but are not happy? Because they don’t “avoid the casual litter” – they do/buy things that are not really necessary, hence wasting their time/money, which results in them having too little time/money for things that are really necessary, which makes them feel unhappy anyway. Whenever there is a thing that you have to do (sooner or later) it feels more or less like a dark cloud hanging above you and in such case it is impossible to be truly happy. The really necessary things are not so numerous after all and there should be enough time to “look up to the skies” and/or “celebrate the boredom”.

The phrase “any useful thing” reminds me of a phrase “any simple act of kindness” that I have heard here (well worth watching):


There is a topic that I wanted to describe in another post, but the more I think about it the more I believe that it is connected with work and happiness – the lack of sleep. Obviously when we are sleepy then we can’t concentrate as much as when we are well rested and our work suffers and so does our overall happiness. But why do people sleep less and less?

One reason is obvious – partying. Some people, especially some young adults, want to have lots of fun and they try to “live their lives to the fullest”. Let me just say that I am sure that partying is NOT a way to become truly happy and that narcotics and alcohol are in fact poisons (they can kill you quite easily) that cost ridiculous amounts of money. Paying big money for poisons that harm your body? Isn’t that stupid? The same goes for cigarettes. Imagine that you are in a building that is on fire – you would surely cover your mouth and/or stay very low to avoid inhaling smoke, right? But cigarette smokers inhale smoke voluntarily! Ridiculous.

But what about people who don’t go partying but sleep too little anyway? It seems that even children sleep less and less nowadays, which is VERY bad. The simple answer, or more precisely the too simple an answer, would be: “because on the Internet there are many interesting things to do/see/read about”. Sure all the people are curious about the world by nature, yet there are some things about our own body that nobody really understands in full.

One of the most interesting parts of our body is the pineal gland that is hidden in the middle of our brain. It regulates our circadian (24-hour) rhythm by releasing melatonin – a hormone that modulates our sleep. I’ve read that “the proper functioning of the pineal gland keeps people focused, happy, awake in the day and asleep at night, and prevents neuro-degeneration as people age.” The problem is that modern technologies (screens that release light on their own – screens that can be seen in the dark) make the pineal gland release less melatonin than it should. It explains why so many people, including children, have trouble falling asleep at a proper hour. It seems that the worst effects are caused by computers and smart-phones that are very closed to the eyes and lesser effects are caused by relatively small TV screens that are significantly farther away from the eyes.

But there is also an additional catch. Concentration. What we see on computers and smart-phones is usually much different from what we see on the TV. Reading a text or watching small details from a close distance requires much more concentration than watching a normal movie from afar. Humans can stay concentrated this way (on small details) very long, but at the cost of their sleep.

What about colours? Have you noticed that most Internet pages and most programs use a white background and dark letters? You could say: “So what? It's like a page in a printed book”. Well it is NOT like that at all. A white page in a printed book can't be seen in the darkness – it doesn't glow on its own. You have to lit it with a lamp and then SOME of the light rays reflect from the page and only then your eyes can see it. On the other hand a white computer/smart-phone screen throws much more light DIRECTLY at your eyes AND this light is also a different kind of light than the light coming from a normal lamp. So watching a screen is definitely NOT the same as looking at a page in a printed book.

Now compare how many times you have fallen asleep while: sitting in front of a computer, using a smartphone, watching TV or reading a normal (printed) book. I bet there are big differences in these numbers.

From my own experience I can say that sitting at the computer very long into the night feels like being under a kind of hypnosis – doing or watching things that are not good for me, even though I know I should go to sleep instead. Good and long sleep is much more important than most people think. Unfortunately modern technologies seem to interfere with the amount of our sleep and make us less healthy and less happy in the long run.

PS. There is a rule that I strictly adhere to – when it is dark outside and I watch the TV or use a computer or even read a normal (printed) book I always have the main lamp (the main source of light) lit above me (under the ceiling). The thing is that your eyes should not look at a brightly lit object, even at a page in a printed book, when everything around it is much darker – your eyes get much more “tired” this way, which over time can ruin your eyesight.