overworked
Photo by chaparral

“Work, play, sleep. Choose two.”

When I first arrived as an unsuspecting frosh toHarvey Mudd College (one of the toughest engineering schools around) , the previous quote was continually tossed around by the older students and professors.

As I quickly came to realize, this quote was no joke! The Harvey Mudd coursework was such an overwhelming beast that you could sometimes hear the lesser students whimpering “uncle” in the middle of the night. I reckon that Mudd is not the only place where work reigns supreme. In fact, the pressures and tension of a real-life work environment can rival or even surpass the torture chamber that I experienced at Mudd (though I highly doubt this). So what I’m about to discuss applies to a good majority of people.

The majority of the students at Mudd fell under the work/sleep category. Students would typically work hard throughout the day, allowing them to get a good night’s rest. The next day, they would be duly rewarded with 5 new problem sets due the next day. Not the best existence, but it was preferable to failing out of school. Similarly, many of us go to work from 9-5, go home and make dinner, and go straight to bed. Rinse and repeat x 5.

The Solution

So how did students prevent themselves from becoming crazy? All work and no play calls for some very depressed and burned out students. Many of the students learned very quickly that it required a delicate balancing act to survive at Mudd. The key to survival here was flexibility.

While WORK would always predominantly take up the largest slice of the pie at Mudd, there was still an oppurtunity for clever juggling and manipulation of the rest of your time. For example, you might sleep a little later than usual to catch a movie that you’ve been wanting to watch. You might be sleep deprived for a little bit, but you can catch up on your sleep at some other time. Take another example,you miss a couple of classes to go on that vacation you’ve been dreaming about. You might be behind in some of your classes when you come back, but you can copy off your friend’s notes and get back up to speed. Other times, you might have SO much work to do that you have to pull consecutive all-nighters. It’s all a balancing act that takes good judgement and requires a good sense of responsibility to maintain.

Obviously, you don’t want to go on vacation during finals week. :P

So while it is true that you can only choose two things among work, play, and sleep, it is important to realize that it is not set in stone. Be flexible, be dynamic. Mix it up, keep things interesting.

Daniel Sutoyo recently wrote a post on a similar topic over at worknplay.net that can be found here. It’s an interesting post that deals with how to effectively balance work, play, and sleep for a variety of different personalities.