Why Are You Wide Awake at 2AM?

Like other business leaders, I’ve found myself, on many occasions, awake at 2 AM (or so) pondering an issue associated with my business. It seems to be a fairly common occurrence with many people, based on my informal poll with other business leaders. And at that time of night, it seems all the worst-case scenarios come to the forefront, much to my dismay….

I’m not sure of all the brain dynamics involved, but from preliminary reading on this topic, I’ve learned our brain shows more activity while we are dreaming than when we are awake. It often works harder at night than in the day, quickly and quietly filing away experiences of the day, reflecting on some of those experiences, and all too often, dwelling on some of those experiences. Quite literally, while we sleep, our brain is intently “digesting” events, conversations, ideas, plans, and other assorted exposures we were subjected to in our daily lives. 

Those 100 billion nerve cells that make up our brain – about the same as the number of trees in the Amazon rainforest – need sleep to categorize, process, and digest the many inputs it received during our waking hours. So, why then, are we awake at 2 AM? 

From my experience, there seems to be a number of different reasons. First, there are inconsistencies taking place in our lives and our brain is somewhat stymied because of them. It somewhat “stutters” when they come along…causing us to wake up and think about the situation, and remedy it in somewhat, even if it is only to say to ourselves, “I will work on this tomorrow”. Second, there is genuine fear or misgiving taking place in our situation and our brain seeks to “solve or resolve” that fear…and we wake up trying to do so.  Lastly, we just need some quiet time to “think more clearly” about a given situation and the middle of the night, after some sleep, seems to be a time when that can occur.

Whatever the case, I’ve concluded that usually I just have to get up, write some things down, let my brain “calm down”, and then get back to the sleep I need.  Also, I find that if I get cold while I am up, getting back into a warm bed helps me get back to a sound sleep.  Sounds weird, but it works for me.

So, the next time you find yourself awake at 2 AM, recognize it is your brain doing something important, go with it for a little while, and then get back to bed. We all need sleep – some need more than others – and it is vital to our emotional, intellectual, social, and even spiritual well-being to get plenty of good sleep. 

Instead of fighting it, we can let the 2 AM wakeup call work for us to make us better leaders, making better decisions, with fewer mistakes.