When hustle culture won’t let up, hitting snooze might be the most powerful thing you can do.

If you are reading this at 3:12 a.m., eyes burning, brain fog thick as pea soup, desperately Googling “how to fall asleep fast” while watching your essay deadline inch closer, you are not alone. We have all been there, bargaining with the universe for “just five more hours” of sleep like it is some celestial vending machine. Maybe you think sleep is optional — something you will do when the semester ends, or when capitalism collapses, whichever comes first. 

Sleep is not a luxury, weakness or procrastination in disguise. Sleep is resistance. Sleep is power. Sleep is your brain’s version of pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, and we students desperately need a reboot.

It is not surprising that university culture has a sleep problem. We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honour. Pulling all-nighters has become a twisted rite of passage, some sort of warped flex that we think proves we care more than the average student. “I have not slept in 48 hours” is often said with the same pride as “I just ran a marathon,” except one of those things improves your health and the other slowly kills you. 

Our academic lives are engineered to ignore biology. With lectures starting at 8:30 am, deadlines at midnight and exams that demand peak performance at sunrise. All while juggling work, social obligations and existential dread. No wonder we treat sleep like that flaky friend who always cancels plans. Although it may feel like it, sleep is not your enemy. It is your ride-or-die and the one constant that keeps you from turning into a feral raccoon with a caffeine addiction and a short temper.

The science backs it up, but you probably already know that. You have read about how sleep consolidates memory, how it helps with emotional regulation, how it makes you less likely to scream into the void when your laptop crashes mid-paper.

When you sleep, you are not being lazy. Your brain sorts through the chaos of the day, shelving memories, erasing junk, rebooting creativity. Your body gets to repair muscles, balance hormones, and regulate systems you did not even know you had. Sleep is the backstage crew making sure the show goes on. Without it, the spotlight burns out and the curtains fall.

University students are not only overworked but overstimulated. You cannot go from writing a paper while listening to lo-fi beats, checking TikTok and texting three group chats to suddenly expecting your brain to shut down like a laptop lid. Your brain is not a machine, and it needs cues and softness to facilitate your transition into a deep slumber.

The first step is that it is time to stop doom scrolling yourself into insomnia. Set a time to unplug — 30 minutes before bed. Trade the scroll for a book, or a podcast with a voice so soothing it could hypnotize you. Light a candle and put on those dumb fuzzy socks you have. 

You do not need a Pinterest-perfect night routine to fix your sleep, you just need consistency. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day — even on weekends. I know that sounds unfair, but nothing wrecks your sleep rhythm faster than treating your Sunday morning like an extension of the chaos from Saturday night.

Another thing is to stop chugging coffee late into the afternoon. As someone whose days reach a peak when consuming a fresh iced coffee, caffeine is a sneaky liar. You think it is helping, but it is just delaying your crash and screwing up your sleep cycle. The same goes for energy drinks. If you would not drink it before a nap, maybe do not drink it after lunch.

There is no pressure to do all of this at once. Start small so it can eventually become long-term. Get curious about what your body feels like when it is well-rested. Notice how your brain lights up, how your emotions do not feel like they are hanging by a thread, how suddenly you are laughing more and crying less in the Tim Hortons line. That is the magic behind getting the proper amount of sleep.

Sleeping better might even save your grades. Students who get consistent, quality sleep perform better academically than their sleep-deprived peers. So all that time you think you’re “gaining” by skipping sleep, you are actually losing it in the long run — with lost focus, slower thinking and more room for mistakes to occur. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and caffeine is not a substitute for water, rest or sanity.

Next time you are tempted to pull an all-nighter, ask yourself: is this really the best I can do? Or am I just scared of pausing? Afraid that if I stop working, I will fall behind, that I will not be enough? Know that you are not your productivity or your GPA. You are a human being with limits, and honouring those limits is not failure — it is freedom.

There is something almost radical about deciding to sleep in a world that wants you constantly alert, always grinding and endlessly online. Choosing rest is an act of self-respect because you view your well-being as worth more than one more paragraph, one more scroll, one more hour hunched over your laptop. It is choosing to dream — not just in sleep, but in life.

When your brain is spiraling and the deadline looms and the group chat is lit and everything feels too loud, remember you are allowed to rest. You are allowed to log off and sleep peacefully.

You are allowed to begin again — tomorrow after a good night’s rest.