Last week someone said to me, “I don’t know how you do so much.”

And honestly, the answer is because I sacrifice a lot, I’m very motivated (to an obsessive extent, because I have an addictive personality), and also because I don’t really sleep all that much.

At the beginning of Lyrical Host, when we had barely any customers but those customers were, accidentally, spread out across four different continents, we learned pretty rapidly that we would have to navigate a lot of different time zones, and that sleep was going to look very different.

With the exception of 2 years of covid-induced fatigue, for the most part I probably sleep 6 hours a night at most, and can function* on 4 for a few days before I need a handful of hours to top up.

*By function I mean get some exercise, walk at least 4 miles, do at least a 10 hour work day, eat properly, and not have the house madly out of control.

Recently I’ve been working 8:30am – 2:30am, and that’s no joke when a big chunk until the late evening is in-person customer facing stuff that requires going to a location and running up and down three flights of stairs while fixing any and all problems. Then I go home and work on Lyrical Host stuff some more.

I don’t have days off, I measure hours off instead (I’ll talk about that in another post because it’s a whole separate thing).

And even though I get grumpy sometimes (quite a bit), I don’t get burned out from any of it because fundamentally I love what I do. And even if I forget that, someone always turns up to remind me of it.

If I go to bed earlier, I wake up earlier. My body is super trained now and will max out at 6 solid hours regardless. I can stay awake for as long as I like, and then as soon as I turn out the light I’m fast asleep. And unless something interrupts me, I’m sleeping solidly straight through with great sleep, and waking up feeling a bit tired but not exhausted.

So, if you’re looking to stay awake forever (there should be a good reason or you’ll never do it), and like me, you’re a regular sleep-8 hours-straight-once-your-head-hits-the-pillow type of person, here’s what I do/did to change things up.

Start small – When I went straight from 8 hours of sleep to having to be up an entire night straight, I felt physically sick from exhaustion. Small amounts of increased time are better, you can’t go from 8 hours to 5 overnight.

Lighting – We had our house fitted with bright white LED lights. And by bright I mean Las Vegas Luxor bright, you can probably see them from space. Lighting is super important for controlling how awake you are all the time. We also have shutters, and those are great for maximising the darkness to actually sleep when sleep is needed.

Visualisation – I’m one of those people that has their brain going a million miles an hour all the time. So I don’t visualise anything to do with getting up or staying awake, but I do visualise when it’s time to sleep because that way I can actually turn it off (as such). What I typically do is visualise a computer desktop (yes, really, major geek vibes!) and go through closing all the imaginary windows and tabs. I’m asleep before I’ve finished. If you’re having trouble staying awake, you could do a reverse visualisation to wake yourself up.

Having a buddy – Joe and I endlessly (usually accidentally) keep each other awake and working at night, because one of us inevitably has a question that only the other can answer. It’s kind of like a really slow, weird version of tennis.

Caffeine – Weirdly I recently found out I’m not addicted to caffeine, although I should be given how much lime Diet Coke I was drinking, but caffeine is of course an obvious one for staying up. Joe is more of a caffeine fiend than I am. But, neither of us drinks energy drinks and I’m not sure I’d recommend those long term because of organ issues and because I feel like you just get tireder when you crash out from them.

Consume something motivational – An enthusiastic podcast or an ebook can really help me wake up. And often my mind will drift into something totally different (usually a new idea of some kind or a better way of doing something), it just gives my brain that little spark.

I’m very much influenced and motivated by people doing something well. With passion and dedication. It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be an Olympic sport, it could be an artist illustrating something. It doesn’t have to be anything relevant to what I’m doing in any way, it’s still energy for me.

Temperature – I’m very sensitive to temperature and I like a specific range; too hot or too cold either way and I’ll wake up. But using temperature to my advantage means everything runs slightly colder when I want to stay awake. Having air con put in our house was honestly one of the best things ever, because I get a lot more done in environments where I’m actively happy with the temperature and it’s conducive to working. Our house runs very hot at the best of times, and takes ages to cool down after a heat wave, so it makes a big difference in how long I can stay awake and how much I can focus.

Movement – If you want to stay awake, moving is essential. Sitting on the sofa with a blanket? You’ll go to sleep. Putting on some upbeat music and walking around a bit helps a ton.

Have a plan – Sometimes I need to pull all-nighters, so planning to have something on TV I can watch is helpful – usually a queue of things. Anything that makes you want to get to the end is good. Weirdly, I also like watching the parliament channel when MPs are in the House of Commons late, because there’s something about someone else also working that normalises it.

And those are my tips! If you have any tips for staying awake, let me know in the comments!