The Night Shift: Sleep, Stress, and Self-Care
The most trustworthy source of food and
fitness journalism in the country.
Editor’s note: Hi there! You probably already know that sleep is important—it’s right up there with diet and exercise when it comes to your overall health. And yet, in the popular discourse on fitness, sleep often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. We’ve shared tips and tricks for better sleep before, but those bullet points don’t always capture the real struggle of turning sleep goals into reality.
Today, our writer Shantanu Kishwar takes you on his four-year journey from sleep-deprived to well-rested. His story might seem ordinary, but in that ordinariness lies a powerful realisation: all the generic sleep advice in the world won’t help until you sort things out in your head—a reminder that the path to wellness is rarely straightforward, but with perseverance and self-reflection, it’s a journey worth taking.
You can connect with Shantanu on Twitter and subscribe to Multitudes, his newsletter.
Phase 1: Shedding Ignorance (2018-2020)
In 2018, I first heard Matthew Walker preach the virtues of a good night’s sleep on the Hidden Brain podcast. His message was clear: sleep well, and my brain and body would be better equipped to deal with wakefulness; sleep poorly, and I’d be at a higher risk for cancer and heart disease.
His TED Talk, which came out a year later, lengthened the list of warnings. Poor sleep would worsen my ability to reproduce, learn new information, fight disease, distort my genes, and heighten my risk for suicide. The shorter my sleep, the shorter my life (and the worse it’s quality).
Until this point, I intuitively knew that poor sleep was unhealthy, but only to the extent that it left me groggy the next day. I thought the harms of all-nighters were short-lived and could be undone by sleeping in on weekends.
Suddenly, I was jolted out of my ignorance. Poor sleep habits would erode the foundation of long-term health, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore. Like most health-related information, though, knowledge didn’t automatically translate into action. The consequences felt far into the future, while the joy of another episode binged late at night was immediate.
My immediate circumstances didn’t incentivise change, either. I was living at home with my parents, pursuing a Master’s degree requiring little effort. I had no real responsibilities that demanded a vigilant schedule. So, I coasted through 2018-2020, no longer ignorant about the impact of my actions, but unwilling to change them.
Phase 2: Laying the Foundation (March 2020 – December 2020)
As my Master’s programme drew to an end in early 2020, my anxiety slowly rose. I needed to figure out what I’d do next; after completing my second degree in the humanities, the only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to switch fields entirely. I felt like I’d wasted many years and two degrees, and had to play catch-up with friends who were already well into their working lives.
Then came the pandemic.
My low-level anxiety was kicked into hyperdrive by the gloom of the early lockdown months. Worries about my future were compounded by the fragility of our collective future.
This was the first time I noticed a clear correlation between my mental health and sleep. Anxious thoughts kept me awake at night, provoking lethargy the next morning. It played out across days and weeks, changing my demeanour. I felt gloomy and emotionally fragile, bordering on depressive at times.
While poor sleep didn’t cause what I was feeling, it fuelled a vicious cycle of anguish. It’s also the only thing I felt I could control. So, I became protective of it—going to bed at a decent hour, avoiding screens, and refusing to share my room with anyone as far as possible (much to the annoyance of my brother when he visited home once).
Eventually, my anxiety eased. Despite graduating into pandemic-induced hiring freezes, I got a job. COVID became less fearful, with cases tapering and things opening up. This semblance of normalcy made the nights easier.
It’s now that I realised that, for me, sleep hacks provided incremental benefits at best. Cutting out caffeine or screens at night didn’t shut down the chatter that kept me up; getting a job and easing my anxiety did.
Phase 3: The Curse of Knowledge (January 2021 – May 2021)
For a brief few months, I felt I’d reached a healthy place. I had enough work to keep me busy but not burdened. I was still protective of my sleep, but managed to hold things together. Then I got my Fitbit.
It came as a gift from my brother to support my fondness for running and desire to be healthy. The sleep tracking seemed like a fun gimmick, though it stopped being fun quite fast.
Sleep tracking metrics can feel more like a test.
Every morning, I woke up to a “sleep score” – a judgement based on how long I slept, my resting heart rate, how much I’d tossed and turned, and other metrics that felt irrelevant until this point.
Going to bed suddenly felt like a nightly exam. Having been a high achiever throughout college, waking up to a score in the 70s meant my day began with a sense of mediocrity. My data also indicated that every night, I slept 40 to 60 minutes less than I thought, because apparently humans frequently wake up without realising it. So, getting 8 hours of sleep required 9 hours in bed, which seemed Herculean.
Around this time, I’d started taking a long-term view of my health. Far from helpful, this change in attitude, coupled with evidence of poor sleep, gave my anxious brain something new to worry about. Matthew Walker’s warnings suddenly felt very real; cancer, heart disease, infertility, and depression felt imminent.
Unfortunately, before I could build a healthy new equilibrium, life took a turn for the worse.
📈 Share with someone obsessed with fitness trackers
Phase 4: Hustle Culture and Insomnia (May 2021 – September 2021)
In the middle of 2021, I got my first corporate job. Entranced by the larger salary and the belief that I was doing important work, I jumped in with enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, this was an environment where enthusiasm was exploited. The head of my team preached hustling and mocked work-life balance. Deadlines were short and nights were long. It was acceptable to be told at 9 PM on Monday that a 100+ page proposal was due by 11 AM on Wednesday. Two all-nighters later, we were expected to get back to delayed tasks without time off.
Looking back, it’s easy to see this was a toxic workplace, but I was blind to it at the time, especially because it was my first job. I deferred to public ‘wisdom’ with everyone from my boss to LinkedIn gurus delivering sermons on the need to sacrifice in your twenties.
Shantanu’s toxic job affected his sleep.
So sacrifice, I did. I let go of my relationship, social life, and physical well-being, attaching my self-worth to professional achievements. I was perpetually on edge, afraid of being fired.
My mental health crumbled, and I started therapy. Each session was a safety valve where I could vent and receive support. My therapist acknowledged my anxieties and did her best to make me believe I wasn’t a failure. While the validation helped, it couldn’t address the root of my problems at work.
At this point, I desperately needed my sleep. I became neurotic about routines, once again cutting out caffeine and screens at night. But once in bed, endless to-dos and angry rants flooded my mind. My heart rate sped up as I dreaded the next day’s work. I no longer associated my bed with rest, but with fear.
I’d lie awake, counting the hours until my alarm went off. I turned on music designed to induce sleep, listened to podcasts or TV shows loud enough to drown out my thoughts but soft enough to not actively engage me. Some nights, this helped. On others, I’d give up, pull out my laptop, and start working. The only way to calm my brain was to get a head start on the next day’s tasks.
At some point, generally around 1 or 2 AM, I’d work myself to exhaustion and mercifully pass out.
This vicious cycle of mild insomnia left me groggy and unproductive during the day, stretching work late into the night. My anxiety worsened, manifesting as numbness in my feet. Illnesses and deaths of loved ones added to my woes.
In light of COVID’s stark reminder of mortality, I feared for my well-being like never before. I felt closer to a full-fledged breakdown. My mental health was shattered, leading to a prescription of antidepressants that I was too afraid to take.
A sense of stigma and fear of side effects kept me from using that prescription, but I was desperate for something to rescue me from this crisis. That’s when my therapist recommended melatonin.
Phase 5: Melatonin Mania (September 2021 – May 2022)
The recommendation came at the end of an emergency session on September 19th, when I was trying to move from Delhi to Bangalore. On my second night in the city, terrified by the fact that, in addition to work, I needed to find a house and set up a new life, I had a full-blown panic attack.
It started as I got into bed, haunted by the burdens of the days and weeks ahead. Nothing drowned out the voices in my head, and no amount of midnight work calmed my mind. My heart galloped at 120 beats a minute (my Fitbit thought I was exercising), and I called a friend at 2 AM in tears, voicing my fears. I felt dread like I’d never experienced and was desperate to put an end to the anguish that engulfed me.
I typed out a desperate email to my therapist around 4 AM, pleading for an emergency session. When we spoke the next evening, she helped piece me back together. She knew I needed sleep—if only so I could have a few hours where I wasn’t falling apart—so she suggested I consult a physician about melatonin supplements.
It was a Sunday night, and I couldn’t wait another day, so I substituted the consultation for a Google search. Melatonin supplements, I discovered, were synthetic versions of a hormone that signals sleepiness to the brain. Incidentally, caffeine and blue light block melatonin production, hence the recommendations to avoid them in the evening. More importantly, they weren’t habit-forming and didn’t have significant side effects. You could even get them as gummies; surely, my frenzied brain reasoned, nothing sold as gummies could be serious medication.
Melatonin signals sleepiness to the brain.
From that evening onward, I popped a tiny white pill before bed, flooding my system with enough melatonin to induce slumber. The drowsiness overpowered the noise in my head. My nights weren’t perfect, but they were better. I crawled out from rock bottom, slowly breaking free of the vicious circle. I went from survival mode to some degree of normalcy, feeling a semblance of control over my sanity.
This small step up felt like a victory, and those pills like a superpower. Never mind that it was like healing a broken bone with a bandaid, not addressing the underlying issues. I was getting decent rest and started singing its praises, telling anyone who complained of poor sleep to follow suit.
Phase 6: Taking Control (May 2022 – Present)
For the next few months, I revelled in melatonin-induced slumber a few times a week. A part of me worried about becoming dependent on it, but I tuned it out initially.
Eventually, though, I accepted that if my situation demanded a constant crutch, I needed to change my situation. I’d been in the job long enough to see that I wasn’t the problem. Perpetual mismanagement meant my team was always short-staffed, with people joining with hope and quitting soon after out of frustration. I went through 7 managerial changes in 14 months, though the organisation’s leadership didn’t seem to care.
After a particularly bad bout of work in April and May 2022, which led to a prescription for anti-anxiety medication, I put in my papers. I was tired of constantly feeling anxious, needing supplements to sleep, and being prescribed serious medication just to function. I didn’t know what the future held, but it was worth the risk to try for something better.
That decision, taken almost exactly two years ago, paid off. In my new job, I found myself working in the most supportive environment I could hope for. Weekends are respected, boundaries rarely breached, and colleagues are as kind as can be. Work, even at its busiest, has never been toxic.
As soon as I put in my papers at the last job, the anxious chatter in my head quietened. I was able to quit melatonin cold turkey and no longer relied on weekend therapy sessions to get me ready for the week.
And in the two years since, I’ve consciously worked towards building a healthier relationship with my sleep, primarily by accepting my anxiety for what it is, not trying to fight or drown it out with pills.
I’m still a light sleeper, but now, on nights I can’t sleep, I don’t try to force it. I pick up a book, watch something, or do some work. If I’m going to be awake, I might as well make the time count.
Over and above this foundation of mental health, I still practise the habits everyone preaches. I’ve turned my Fitbit from foe to friend. Where earlier I’d dread seeing my poor score, I’ve now used its data to change the time I eat my last meal (by 7 PM, generally) and have my last drink of coffee or alcohol, if at all (not after 3 PM).
This journey with my sleep has been part of a larger odyssey to understand my priorities, capabilities, and the life I want to live. LinkedIn influencers might shun me, but I’m certain that following their maxim of sleeping when I’m dead will only get me to my grave faster.
I’ve learned that it’s not about doing less work – in addition to my job now, I’m working on a side project, writing more than ever, and exercising regularly – but about finding kind people and places to work with and in, and consciously factoring my wellbeing into every decision.
Throughout this, I’ve also realised the importance of living in the present and stop living for a hypothetical tomorrow. I don’t want to wait till I’m 40, having achieved someone else’s idea of professional success, to think about the life I want to lead. I want to be purposeful about how I spend my time and not constantly worry about doing it wrong. I’ve found a way to live well today and set up a healthy future, and I’m doing my best to actualise it. Most importantly, I’ve figured out that it’s a lot easier to do this when I’m well-rested.
Share with someone who is bad in bed… we mean struggles with sleep 😝
