You are not immune

Having changed my approach to job hunting, I’ve been receiving far more offers, and recently been flooded with skills assessments left and right.

I’ve also been staying up far too late (and waking up far too early) so I haven’t been getting much sleep.

Realizing that if I took nearly any aptitude test in this state, I’d probably bomb it for sheer fatigue, I decided to hold off a day and commit to getting a good night’s rest.

Lack of sleep is like that. You often don’t know how tired you are until you test it. Which is why all kinds of catastrophes can be attributed to a lack of sleep.

Or consider your health and wellbeing. If you mope around your house all day or eat too much junk food or watch too much tv, you’re going to feel tired and apathetic—even if you don’t think you are. It affects you even if you don’t think it does—often at your detriment.

I’ve always joked that the most potent lesson I learned as psychology major in college was how unknowing, unaware, and how just plain stupid people can be. But I realize that’s only half-true, because people aren’t dumb. People can think for themselves. And they can certainly move mountains with their minds.

No. The problem is ignorance. Or rather, over-confidence. People think their smart and good-tempered and well-meaning and entirely rational. They think that things like sleep deprivation and loneliness and diet and depression and cognitive biases don’t or won’t affect them at all. But they do. And when they’re inevitably wrong, everyone pays the consequences.

Remember: You are only human. And, you are therefore vulnerable—whether you know it or not. Better then, to avoid any potential shortfalls—to sleep well, to eat right, to do what makes you happy—to acknowledge you’re not as smart as you think, and to never fight with nature. You can’t possibly know what you don’t know before you know it—but by being active, vigilant, and sensible—you just might sidestep a bad call before you do.