Upon returning home from a grueling Thursday, I was exhausted and craving the solace of my bed. However, a glance at my duty calendar served as a stark reminder of the upcoming Human Anatomy test on Friday, and the topic I still needed to tackle. With a deep sigh, I reluctantly settled in for a late-night study session, settling in just past 11 pm.
As the hours ticked by, my gaze drifted to the clock once more, only to discover that 1 am had slipped up on me, and my efforts to focus had yielded little progress. Despite dedicating two hours to studying, my tired mind struggled to retain even the most basic information.
Studying when tired can be counterproductive. Well, what can you do when you have no other choice? In this article, we are going to be answering your long-borne question: should you study when tired?
The body has its own way of functioning and there is a quote by Socrates, an Athenian moral philosopher, that says, ‘man know thyself’. Generally, most people have gotten used to still doing whatever it was they had set out for themselves to do, whether they are tired or not. But then, is it really productive? Do they really achieve the things they are bent on achieving? Let’s look at some of the effects of studying when we are physically tired.
Effects Of Studying When Tired
1. Reduced attention span
Studying when tired tends to reduce your attention span. Most times you’re caught up with thoughts about what you will do as soon as you’re done studying. Other times, you find yourself thinking about what a hectic day you had and barely focusing on what you are studying.
2. Decreased processing speed
When your body is weak, research has shown that it takes a longer time to process information than when you are particularly strong or healthy. The decrease in processing speed of your brain would make you spend so much time with nothing to show for it.
3. Impaired working memory
When you form a habit of studying when you’re tired, your working memory, due to the constant decrease in it’s speed, becomes impaired. You are training your brain to struggle, simple because you repeat this pattern over and over.
4. Difficulty with problem-solving and critical thinking
You find it hard to think when you are tired. Sometimes there would be some things which you should ordinarily know, but due to your fatigue, you won’t be able to produce the answers.
As part of the decrease in the processing speed of your brain, there is a difficulty in critical thinking or sometimes, it would take you longer to do so.
5. Emotional Consequences
Studying when tired has some emotional effects and they can be seen in the following descriptions:
- Increased stress and anxiety
Just imagine placing a heavy barrel on a weak woman who is already having difficulty in walking. She will tend to walk slower and would take an eternity to reach her final destination. That is what it is like when you’re tasking your tired self. You wouldn’t be doing yourself any good as your stress and anxiety would tend to increase.
- Frustration and irritability
Normally, someone who is stressed doesn’t normally have energy for anything that would demand effort. Doing such tends to make them easily frustrated as they are tired.
- Decreased motivation and interest in learning
You can agree with me that a half-closed eye would not care about the formula he had scribbled on the top of his note while taking notes in class. Initially, he was excited about it when the teacher had mentioned it and had scribbled it down immediately but it would certainly be a bad time for that formula once he stumbles across it when he is tired.
- Burnout and emotional exhaustion
Someone who studies when tired is likely to burn out easily. In fact, most times, they sleep off without covering the chapters they had initially planned to read before sleeping.
6. Physical Consequences
What are the physical consequences we tend to experience should you study when tired, Let’s look at them below:
- Fatigue and lethargy
Studying when tired can lead to fatigue and lethargy, which are both not good for the body.
- Headaches and eye strain
Stressing a body which is already weak tends to make the body perform poorly. This in turn leads to headaches and might eventually develop to what is called migraine. One can also experience eye defects, which might later become more complicated eye defects that might be difficult to manage.
- Weakened immune
Studying when tired tends to make the body function abnormally and when the body functions abnormally, one would experience headaches, migraines, etc. This generally makes one’s immune system weak and such a person is liable to diseases.
- Poor posture and musculoskeletal issues
There is always this position a tired person takes when struggling to study or do something against his or her wish. They don’t normally sit upright when studying. This can affect their posture in the long run and can cause them back pains or even musculoskeletal issues.
7. Long-term Effects
In the long run, there are some effects that might develop to affect you should you study when tired; let’s look at them below:
- Increased risk of mental health disorders
There are chances of having mental disorders when we study when we are tired because we don’t take rests or breaks when tired.
- Weakened immune system
With all these problems gradually summed up, our immune system tends to become weak, and thus we are prone to various kinds of diseases.
- Reduced productivity and academic performance
When we look back at our academic performance, we see that studying when tired has made us achieve very little with so much waste of energy. It gradually reduces one’s productivity as well.
- Impaired memory consolidation
Memory consolidation is strengthened by regular and healthy sleep. When you consciously deprive yourself of sleep while studying, this process is hindered.
Strategies to Avoid Studying While Tired
Meanwhile, there are some strategies that can actually help you to avoid studying while tired. Let’s look at some of them, which you can try out today.
- Try and prioritize sleep and maintain a consistent sleep schedule
- Form a reading strategy which would involve you taking regular breaks from your studies.
- Exercise regularly to improve alertness and focus
- Employ as many productivity tools and time management techniques as you can get
Summary
In summary, we have seen some of the effects that can happen to you should you study when tired. We saw different negative effects which included overall decrease in academic performance, impairment of cognitive development, and also some physical effects which included fatigue, eye pain, lethargy and headaches.
However, on the other hand, there are a few ways, which we can employ in order to avoid having to study when tired. Looking at the effects of studying when tired, it’s better we avoid all these by employing other means which can help make our study worthwhile and effective.
