The best way to avoid sleep while studying is to sleep more. You must be surprised by this answer, but nothing can be more true than this. Unless you are a very lazy person, the most possible reason behind feeling sleepy during studies is perhaps you must be sleep deprived in some way or other. In this article, I will discuss the various variables that can arise between your studies and your sleep. Remember, for your healthy life and holistic wellbeing both studies and sleep are equally important. So you can not and should not choose one over the other. Even I would usually score sleep a little more than the studies. Yes, often sleep is to be considered more important than even studies as your sleep often determines the quality as well as the quantity of your studies.
It is a very normal trend to curse sleep as it interferes in most of our daily activities. Many of us have got a wrong notion that sleep is a waste of time. I have heard many people quote that we should maximize our work and minimize our sleep. But biologically and psychologically nothing can be more wrong than this notion. We should learn to take sleep as our friend and not foe. It is the best thing you can do for your holistic wellbeing.
That is why, our natural biology determined that we should sleep for one-third of our whole life. If you sleep 8 hours every day, then it counts to one-third of the day. And if this is your average then naturally you will sleep one-third of your life. I don’t think that there is any other single activity that we spend so much time on. So you can see that biology or the science of nature have determined this for you and all human beings.
For our purpose of life, sometimes we can tweak a little bit with biology and psychology, but we have not been given the authority to overrule or modify the natural rules the way we want. And whenever we will try to do so, remember we will have to pay the price in some way or other. And usually that price is too heavy for our wellbeing in a holistic sense.
This question is perhaps not answerable for anyone as we are not yet sufficiently learned in the fields of human biology, psychology and the whole of natural science as well. But, indications are there that a normal human being is supposed to require approximately 8 hours of sleep every day on an average basis.
There are a lot of people who can do well by sleeping much less than this estimate. Also on the flip side there are people who need more sleep than even 8 hours everyday. And in most cases it is hard to say who is doing right and who is wrong. But if you are doing wrong, then it is a natural rule that your body will give some indications on it. You need to be aware and conscious enough to receive or perceive those indicative signs. If you persistently ignore those indications then you can take it for sure that you will be needing medical insurance policies for your health sooner or later.
Sleeping while studying can be one such vital indication. So before asking for any remedy you should learn to ask why you are feeling sleepy while studying? In most cases, we forget to ask this simple question to ourselves. And we take all kinds of shortcut remedies to solve the problem temporarily. But usually that we do at the cost of damaging our biological and psychological system permanently.
All around you there will be shortcut solutions to these kinds of problems. People think themselves too smart so that they can tweak with the natural rules. But in most cases they are extremely wrong. You can get all kinds of advice from different media and people.
You feel sleepy then you take a cup of strong coffee. From people around you to advertisement media, such advices are flooding everywhere. But my suggestion is this, that before considering or acting upon any such advice which is inherently against the natural rules or indications you should give a good thinking over it for multiple times in multiple angles. Because if there is a price to pay, then no one else but only you will become liable to pay that.
This is a question whose answers are yet not totally discovered. We have not got much into the psychology and biology of sleep and its effects. But there are some studies which indicated some very important side of this phenomena. I am not going into much details of that due to lack of scope in this article, but I will try to sketch an approximate picture of it for your conception.
Have you ever seen a newborn baby sleeping the whole day? Have you ever given a little thought over it? After almost 9 months of sleep in the womb, why does the little one need to remain asleep for almost the whole of the day? Smart people will say that he or she should have kept eyes open wide to see this world and to learn this world! Isn’t that a sheer waste of time for the baby? Well we may think so, but don’t think that nature is so foolish. Nature is much more a great engineer than the best of human engineers.
Now you will be surprised if I say that the baby is learning much more from his or her surroundings in the state of sleep than he or she could have done in the state of awake. And exactly that makes him or her sleep for often more than 18 hours or sometimes even more.
So now will you be surprised if I say that we are naturally programmed to learn more while we sleep than while we are awake? The trends and signals of it comes right from the beginning days of our life and journey in this world. So by the natural conclusion from this can be like this that you need sleep more than awake for your studies and learning.
Though I do not prefer to cite any personal habits of anyone in the course of discussion of general science and natural theory, I still cited here about Einstein for a particular purpose. I want to say that if Einstein can become Einstein by sleeping more than 10 hours, then I think that we can become good enough in our studies by sleeping only 8 hours a day. By calculation, actually we are supposed to become better than Einstein!
Actually as a matter of fact, your learning is directly related to the quality and quantity of your sleep. Sleep is one important factor for your successful and proper learning. Otherwise you can read and memorize the whole of a library but unfortunately you will not even learn a page of any book. Reading, memorizing and learning are not essentially the same notions in terms of human psychology and brain.
Exactly for that reason, a newborn spends more time in sleep. Because his brain capacity by then is too low to process the huge amount of information that his body and sense organs are providing him into his brain. As his brain gradually grows by progressive development of nerve connections as well as neurogenesis, he spends more awake-time to intake larger amounts of external information and stimuli. By then he becomes capable of processing more inputted data and information into his brain for the purpose of his learning.
Thus, whatever book you will be reading or memorizing, whatever experiences you will be intaking to your brain, but if you fail to process them properly and develop appropriate nerve connections then all your endeavours of learning will be a total failure. You and your brain will eventually become nothing but a gigabyte or terabyte or even may be a petabyte hard-disk drive which can contain huge amounts of data and information. But there is no learning for the hard drive.
Lack of sleep even will start interfering with your memorizing power also, after a certain stage and a certain age. This deprivation is usually cumulative in nature. Your years of lack of proper sleep will help you to develop conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s sooner and better. So this will be what you are expected to earn at the end of the day.
Thus for an adult human, it will be advisable to sleep around 8 hours a day on an average basis for proper brain functions and learning. And if he is a student then learning becomes the priority for him. Hence sleep also becomes one of the priorities. It is true that proper and good quality learning depends on many factors other than sleep, but sleep is also one of the main factors which should not be ignored.
Let us not go into further technical details of learning and sleep and their inter-relationships. Instead let me return to our topic of discussion about what can be done to avoid sleep while studying. By now you must have got an idea that your sleep is also a part of your academic life and your studies. So never think it as a waste of time whatever the provocations may be.
This is the first answer you have to search before searching for any remedy or solution. Many will advise to eat this or that, drink this or that but how is it possible to provide a solution unless the problem is properly and fully known? So before acting on any such advice, better you sit and introspect about your own lifestyle. Why is it so that you are feeling sleepy or falling asleep while studying?
There can be many reasons for this problem. Maybe you are very less motivated with your studies, or maybe you have any psychological condition like depression, stress or anxiety. There can be problems in your somatic or body health also that may be generating a drowsiness. Or it can be malnutrition too. It can be the environment or it can be ergonomic issues. So out of all these there can be one or more reasons.
Without targeting the exact reason if you try to suppress your symptom of feeling sleepy by some chemical or physical impositions like drink the coffee, listen to rock music, out for workout or whatever of such type, then it will obviously generate very adverse reactions on your brain, body and mind in the long run which can be more dangerous and even irreversible in many cases.
Only in cases of emergency like exam-time or some short duration assignment or project you can adopt some quickfix or short-term solution to bypass your instinctive signals of sleep generating from your biological system. But for a proper long-term solution to the problem you have to find out the exact cause of it.
This is a very common issue among many students. Apparently this may seem to be a very naive and simple problem. Parents and teachers will push the student for more discipline and rigour in studies. Even often the student also pushes himself in the urge of good career and professional success. Well that is not the exact solution of the actual problem. And this temporary solution for now can become a source of more serious and permanent problems like job dissatisfaction and professional failures which can lead to even more serious psychological and physiological conditions than just feeling sleepy during the student days.
One thing we need to remember is whatever we do in our life has the primary and salient objective to make us happy and holistically healthy. Profession, money, studies, anything and everything should carry this single objective that we should feel happy with. And we should not confuse happiness and fun. Fun and enjoyment we can buy anytime and the more money we invest more we can arrange for fun. But fun never makes us happy, rather there are ample cases where long-term happiness is sacrificed for the sake of short-term fun and enjoyment.
So if our studies are failing to motivate us then that is a very early signal of something even worse in future. So you should sit and introspect about what you can do to solve this problem forever? Maybe you need to change your career path, or maybe you need to make yourself understand that this will be the best career for you in this world based on your inherent capabilities and capacities. Still if it continues to bother you then you may need some kind of professional help from any psychologist or psychiatrist.
This is another very common but very serious problem for students. Depression among students is fast increasing nowadays. It can be said to be directly proportional to the increasing load of studies day by day. And also due to increasing competition loads.
With the progress of human information and knowledge domain the academic loads on students are ever-increasing. But the brain power of students has not enhanced in appropriate proportions. Moreover in many cases, due to worst lifestyles students lose their brain and mind efficiency at quite early ages or hinders the development of them. This situation is sure to generate enough depression and stress.
With ever increasing population the competitions are also ever increasing. Every student is facing the heat of it. This is generating an excess amount of anxiety that often becomes more than that a student can handle properly.
All these and more psychological issues can contribute to the feeling sleepy while studying. The brain and the body want to sleep in order to get saved from the damaging effects of depression, stress and anxiety. This is our body’s own biological self-defence against any damage and malfunction. But further sleep deprivation at such stages can result in extremely bad results both psychologically and physiologically.
So instead of drinking or eating something to get rid of sleep, it is best to consult some medical help like psychologists or psychiatrists for a better, faster and more permanent solution.
Most of the health issues make us feel weak and sleepy. This is a most basic self-maintenance mechanism of the human body. In many cases you may be unaware of the underlying health conditions but your body is internally trying to solve or neutralize the situation to bring back wellness or homeostasis.
For example, when a virus gets inside your system, you remain unaware about it but your body’s immune system gets over-active to kill and neutralize the viral threat. Outwardly you may feel nothing, but only a little more fatigue or drowsiness. That is because your biological system at that point of time is allocating more resources to your immune response system so that it can get enough power to destroy the invading viral infection. If at that time you force your body to change its natural priorities according to your wish or need then most possible you will be welcoming a full-scale viral infection for you for which you have to visit your doctor and get a full load of antibiotics and other medications. So in such a case you need to learn to hear your own body’s internal vibrations and you should need to respond accordingly and responsibly.
Similarly you may be having many kinds of underlying physical issues that can create a feeling of fatigue or drowsiness. The issues can arise from your spinal cord which is pretty common for table-workers, or it can be cardio-respiratory which is common to the sedentary lifestyle of many students, or it can be digestive which is resulting in malnutrition and so on. The list is too long to complete here in this article.
But I suppose you have got my point, what exactly I want to convey to you. If you feel that you may be having such an issue then the most intelligent choice will be to take rest and see if the situation gets solved automatically. If it still persists then you must see a doctor for finding out the cause and treating that in a proper way.
This is the most common reason for student weakness and fatigue. Most of the students are in the mode of eating less and consuming high. Moreover their immature eating habits tend to make them even more malnutritioned. Young students are more fond of fast foods and junk foods. They drink more cold drinks and other unhealthy drinks that contribute to malnutrition and dehydration.
So if you feel that you are falling asleep while studying and if that continues for a length of time then at the very first you should put your diet under the scanner. Change your diet, improve your diet and see the effects. If you feel better and energized then take it for sure that your problem was malnutrition. But if the problem still persists then maybe the real problem is different and you need to seek some professional help from doctors to help you out of the situation.
For any healthy person the environment is just the next important thing to his or her own mindset. If we suppose that the mindset of the student is quite positive and well cultured, still if the environment is not so then that will create an adverse psychological reaction within the respective student. This reaction in course of time will show up through a variety of implications and symptoms. One such symptom can be feeling sleepy or drowsy while studying.
Ergonomics also play a vital role at least at a longer stretch of time. For shorter periods it matters less on how you sit and how you work. But for students study hours are not limited to a few hours and a few days only. It is a continuous process that the student has to follow year after year till he finishes his last degree. In such cases, where he sits to study, his chair, table, lighting, air passage and every other such variables get more than important. Bad work conditions or bad ergonomics can result in under-performance and even error performance in studies and work.
A wrong table or a wrong chair or a wrong combination can create stress and issues related to cervical and lumbar spine issues which can make a student severely fatigue and drowsy. Apparently the student will not develop a consciousness of his spinal condition but only feel little uncomfortable which he will struggle hard to adapt. But adapting with a spinal stressor is not an intelligent choice in most of the cases as this can lead to even more dreaded medical situations which can be very difficult to treat or sometimes even become incurable.
This is the most common and frequent case for young students. They are themselves responsible for feeling sleepy while studying. But the solution is not to avoid sleep while studying. The solution is avoid doing anything while sleeping.
The matter is simple. If you disturb your sleep then in return your sleep will disturb you in everything you do including your studies. So before blaming sleep or trying to find a way to avoid sleep the first thing you can try is to sleep a little more and sleep a little better. If you give your sleep it’s rightful place and position in your lifestyle then in most cases the problem of feeling sleepy will not at all exist and if the problem does not exist then you will not need to find a solution to the problem. In most cases the problem itself is artificial or self-created and then we run wild here and there trying to look for a solution. This is a very negative approach.
The quantity and quality of sleep both matters and both are very important. Check into your lifestyle and introspect on the quantity of your sleep and quality of your sleep. How many hours you dedicatedly sleep everyday and how deep you sleep everyday. Before grabbing a cup of coffee or going for a shot of an energy drink, you should think about doing justice to your sleep and to your health and wellbeing. This is your most primary duty to yourself.
Follow the codes of good sleep, like switch off from all distractions that can disturb your sleep, keep your life simple and clean, and also your mind, lead a good lifestyle, eat healthy foods, read good and positive books, minimize your social media engagements, minimize cell phone usage. By adopting a nature friendly lifestyle, that suits us as human beings and that nature programmed us to lead, you will not only ensure good sleep but also lead to everything good like good digestion, good fitness, good studies, good brain performance and so on.
Just listen to your life and to your inner self and you will find the solution to many problems. In the case of sleep, maybe your body and mind wants a little more sleep from you, so you are falling asleep while studying. So listen to those inner signals and do accordingly. You will need no advisors and no doctors for solving your simple problems. In most cases we are the one to blame because we think that we are smart enough to tweak our biology and ditch the sleep as we wish. But nothing can be a wrong idea than this. Actually you will be ditching your own performance and wellbeing by ditching your sleep.
So it is better to sleep at least 6 to 8 hours every night and try to have it as deep as possible. Deep sleep is necessary for your system rejuvenation and brain refreshment. Don’t carry forward the previous days’ exhaustion and fatigue and cumulatively add it up to create a huge pile of health problems. Shred off today’s fatigue today’s exhaustion by tonight’s sleep, good and deep sleep. Start your tomorrow morning very fresh and very new.
After you wake up in the morning your body and brain wants some sunlight. You must give them a short sunbath of maybe 10 or 15 minutes every morning as soon as you rise up. This will help your body to maintain its biological clock which controls many physiological and psychological processes including your sleep-awake cycle. The fresh air will also help you to energize for the whole day.
Then try to set a routine of some cardio workout in the morning before you start your day. It can be running or jogging, cycling, swimming, martial arts or some sports like football and so on. This will help you to have an energetic day and a goodnight sleep. Then perhaps you will no longer need to look for any solution to avoid sleep while studying.
Right from the time of birth we usually do too much of things that can potentially damage and depreciate our natural systems. Sleep system is no exception. Consciously you have done more things with yourself that will damage your natural sleep system than maintaining it properly. Provocations and influences are lurking all around us. Over-use and abuse of artificial technologies, bad and devalued lifestyles, competition and professional stress, depreciation of emotional wellbeing and so on…the list can be too long.
All these activities of ours right from our childhood eat away or erode away our natural wellbeing and potential. So if you feel that it is your duty or obligation to adhere to such detrimental and damaging standards and lifestyle then why should not you feel that it is your first duty or responsibility to at least maintain your natural abilities and wellbeing if not enhance it?
Same goes for your sleep. Sleep is your natural potential for restoration of your performances as well as wellbeing. So protect your sleep and associated organs of your body and brain before trying to tweak more with your sleep for the sake of studies and career. Because if you do so, it will be at the cost of your performance and wellbeing. So these logics of sleep less and study more are not real but actually a deception.
Your vital sleep organs include certain sectors of your brain like the hypothalamus, pituitary glands, pineal glands and your spinal cord as well. If you are a hardworking student then you are already taxing and torturing your pineal glands right above your both eyes and the spinal cord. Because hours of studies generate enough stress for both the organ systems. Moreover, with the digital revolution, our spinal cord and pineal glands (eyes also) are in a risk like never before. So it becomes an urgency to protect them from further damages.
If these sleep organs get stressed and damaged then you will have a hard time to manage your energy levels and performance levels. So you should try to protect them from inevitable stress and strains as far as possible.
In the domain of Indian culture and medical systems there are processes and resources that can help you to protect and restore your physiological as well as psychological systems. You can try meditation, pranayama, yoga asanas, ayurvedic and herbal supports for protecting and maintaining the good health of your sleep organs. This is almost as important as attending your school or college classes and spending hours with studies. Because if the engine is not working well or the tyres are punctured then only pressing the accelerator and revolving the steering won’t lead you anywhere let alone win the race! So in order to ensure the car will be running well and winning the race of the professional world, you need to ensure that every functional part of the car is working at good or optimum condition.
So if you take care of your own biological system and protect them from damages and depreciations as far as possible then you will find that it is supporting you in whatever choice of endeavours you are undertaking in your life, both at professional and personal spheres.