UP AND AT EM

When you need to stay awake, how do you do it? For me it depends on what I am trying to do. If I am just preparing myself for future nights (getting ready for my midnight shift), the single best way to keep myself up is to play a videogame. It keeps me engaged more than a book or movie would because I have to constantly make decisions and react. I don't claim I play very well when I'm forcing myself to stay up, but at least I'm awake.

But what about those times when you need to stay awake for a specific task, not just for the sake of staying awake? Sitting at work at the end of a long week, trying to survive a meeting after a heavy lunch, or driving somewhere late at night...

I do not drink coffee, so that's out. Fortunately at work I can get up and walk around, shake myself a little. On the midnight shift, some of us do pushups every hour to keep ourselves alert (and fit). You can't do that in meetings, though, and I have real trouble with those, especially in the early afternoon. This has been true for a long time. I fell asleep in every early afternoon class I had in college, no matter how fascinating. I never did find an adequate solution. Part of the problem is that there is a point in the struggle against sleep where you lose your ability to discern whether you are losing that battle and why winning it is even important.

I once got into an argument about this with a gryphon and a dragon. The gryphon thought I was asleep, the dragon was not so sure. In hindsight, considering that gryphons and dragons did not usually attend my CS class, I think maybe the gryphon was right. That was, if I remember correctly, the day I decided I would be better off napping during that hour and just reading the book. I could do this since the professor wrote the book and tended to take his slides directly from its pages. I didn't miss much.

That was a harmless occasion. The time I slowed down to let a dinosaur cross route 29 ended up being harmless because I was the only person on the road at that time, but the potential consequences were much more dire. When I woke up enough to realize just how dangerous that drive had been, I was appalled (and still am, I was *really* lucky). I also changed my driving habits and identified a series of cues that can help me tell if I'm falling asleep. Threshold events are key if you're going to be doing most of your judging in a sleep impaired state. Mythical and extinct creatures are a big one, although they're pretty far down the list. If I've made it to that point, I've already missed too many signs. My friend Bruce uses the "one eye test:" If he ever finds himself closing one eye so half of his body can get some sleep while the other half drives, he pulls over immediately.

A list of sleep criteria is good, but it still fails the meeting test. Namely because the solution when driving, to pull over and rest or walk around a bit and refresh yourself, does not work so well in meetings or classes. The boss looks at you funny if you start doing jumping jacks during her presentation.

So, dear readers, how do you do it? What methods do you use to discretely wake up and stay awake during meetings and presentations? Tired minds want to know.