Perchance to Dream

After a long night of tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable, can't stop thinking about that thing you said (or did), and finally falling asleep just before the alarm went off, the last thing you want to see when you open up your browser that morning is a link that seems just a little too spot on:

Poor sleep linked to dementia and early death, study finds.

Like I needed scientists to tell me this.

More importantly, what's with the people who volunteered for this study? Are they suicidal? Hallucinogenic drug seekers who couldn't get into the dopamine deprivation study? Should we trust anything those people have to say?

I'm pretty sure we all knew - observationally, in real life - that lack of sleep makes you a kind of crazy that makes you want to kill and that no amount of coffee can cure. 

And which leads inevitably to falling asleep at socially inappropriate and personally embarrassing times.

Sleep always wins.

I experienced this first hand… (insert flashback music here)

I was part of a team making a business trip to our office in London. I would be presenting our technology roadmap. I suggested to my boss that we not take the red-eye Sunday night as there would be too little time to prep - let alone shower, shave, and put on a tie - before the first presentation scheduled for Monday morning, 9:00am local time. Not to mention jet lag, and the likelihood that we wouldn't get a good night's sleep and be in a place I like to call the ragged edge.

My boss reminded me that Sunday was Father's Day and if I wanted to take an earlier flight I certainly could, but she was not going to miss Father's Day with her dad. Besides, she noted, she had taken the overnight flight to London plenty of times and gone straight to work in the office without any problems but if I didn't think I could do it, well, take that earlier flight instead.

Now, I was a father myself by that point in my life but I had always thought of Father's Day as a fake holiday, a ripoff of Mother's Day and a cash grab by greeting card and power tool manufacturers (and yes, I'm afraid of power tools). Father's Day wasn't really a big deal to me, but I was a nervous flyer and also may have seen one too many horror movies: Never split up. Also, my boss was making some weird, 21st century comment on my manhood. (What, you can't present a PowerPoint deck on 2 hours sleep? I don't care what science says! You're a weakling and a coward!) So, I thanked her for offering me the option to leave early but agreed to fly with the group. 

We arrived in London too early to check into our hotel so we changed into office-appropriate apparel in the public bathrooms at Heathrow. My dress shirt definitely looked like it had just made a transatlantic flight jammed in an overhead compartment. We then took a car into London and the office.

As I stood at the head of the table in the conference room with my Boston-based co-workers setting out paper copies of the presentation, waiting for the meeting to get started, I can say I was definitely feeling demented. Not suicidal, however; though I did have something of a fatalistic sensibility about what was about to happen. Success or failure, one way or another, this day would end with me in an unfamiliar bed, asleep, under the influence of several martinis - my favorite sleep aid then and to this very day.

The seats at the long table filled up, there was a round of introductions and a context-setting opening by my boss, then I began my presentation.

Not even 10 minutes into the presentation I noted that my boss, her assistant, and her business partner were all fast asleep. My boss' business partner had been smart enough to open his laptop and position his hands on the keyboard. Were his eyes closed or was he looking down at his laptop screen? Was his face slack from a loss of consciousness or was he stunned and amazed by the incisive insights in my presentation? My boss' assistant had apparently fallen asleep while taking notes. Her pen was no longer on the page of her legal pad, having wandered off to the table top.

My boss sat with her arms crossed in front of her, eyes closed, fast asleep.

The locals seemed to understand and nobody was snoring so I continued with the presentation, asked for questions, and thanked them all for their time and attention. 

That's why I didn't need to read that article on sleep deprivation. I saw it first hand. I definitely felt demented and it almost led to an early death, for my boss, her assistant, and her business partner.