Sleep
How to pull an all-nighter
An all-nighter costs you the next day: after a night with no sleep, people do worse at work that needs attention and memory. A few hours of sleep is usually the better choice. If you have to stay up anyway, do the hardest work before 2:00 AM, take one short nap, keep the lights bright, and do not drive the next day until you have slept.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
First
Should you pull an all-nighter?
An all-nighter is worth it only when the work cannot be late and cannot be finished any other way. Before you decide, do one sum.
Count the hours from now until the deadline. Take away the hours of work you have left. What remains is the time you could sleep.
If four or more hours remain, you do not need an all-nighter. Work until about , sleep, and finish in the morning. If one or two hours remain, a short sleep or a nap still fits. If nothing remains, the plan below is for you.
The plan
How to pull an all-nighter: a plan by the hour
The all-nighter plan below is for ten hours of work, started at and due at . Only one hour is left over, so the plan has one short nap in it.
| Time | What you do |
|---|---|
| Work, four hoursDo the parts that need the most thinking now. | |
| Nap, twenty minutesSet an alarm before you lie down. | |
| Wake up, fifteen minutesLights on, cold water on your face. | |
| Work, six hoursKeep the easy parts, like checking, for the end. | |
| Time to spare, twenty-five minutesFor printing, sending or getting there. | |
| DeadlineHand it in. Then go home without driving. |
Do the hardest work first.
Your body pushes hardest for sleep between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM. That is what NIOSH, a US work safety institute, tells nurses who work at night. So do the parts that need thinking before then.
Nap for twenty minutes, not for an hour.
NIOSH says a nap of about 20 minutes ends before deep sleep begins. After about an hour you are in deep sleep, and waking from it can leave you groggy. If you have more time, sleep for about 90 minutes or longer.
Keep the lights bright.
The NHLBI, a US health agency, tells people who work nights to keep the lights bright. Light tells your brain that it is daytime.
If you drink coffee, drink it early.
The caffeine in coffee takes about 30 minutes to reach its full effect, NIOSH says. The NHLBI says its effects can last up to 8 hours, and tells night workers to keep caffeine to the first part of the night.
Try it
Plan your own all-nighter
The planner below does the sum for your own night. If there is room to sleep, the plan puts the sleep in.
From half an hour to twenty hours.
Sleep in this plan
20m
This is an all-nighter. One short nap fits, with time to wake up after it.
Work, 4h
Nap, 20m
Set an alarm before you lie down.
Wake up, 15m
Lights on, cold water on your face.
Work, 6h
Time to spare, 25m
Deadline
After a night like this, do not drive until you have slept.
Your plan: 10h of work and 20m of sleep before .
This is a plan, not a record of your night. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
The cost
What does an all-nighter do to you?
After an all-nighter, people in studies did worse the next day. Two small findings show how.
In two small studies, four hours of sleep was far better than none.
At a university in Canada, students did attention and memory tasks. In one study they had been awake all night, and in the other they had slept for four hours. Both groups did worse than after a normal night. But the night with no sleep hurt their scores a lot, and four hours of sleep seemed to prevent the largest part of that (Gosselin, De Koninck and Campbell, 2017).
You may keep less of what you learned.
In one small study, high school students learned new words in the evening. When they were kept awake until morning, they remembered fewer of the words two days later than when they had slept that night (Gais, Lucas and Born, 2006). So if you are staying up to study for a test, the night can cost you part of what you studied.
The next day
What to do the day after an all-nighter
The day after an all-nighter has two rules: do not drive until you have slept, and go back to your usual bedtime.
Do not drive until you have slept.
NHTSA, the US road safety agency, advises that teen drivers put off driving until they are well rested. That is the rule to follow here, at any age. Coffee is not always enough, it says: you may be less alert than you feel, and a person who is seriously short of sleep can fall asleep for four or five seconds at a time. Walk, take the bus, or ask for a ride.
Go to bed at your usual time.
A nap of 20 minutes can help you through the day. Then go to bed at your usual time, or a little earlier, and get up at your usual time. The sleep debt calculator adds up what you lost, and the page on how to fix your sleep schedule helps if your nights stay off.
The NHLBI says to talk to your doctor if you think you are sleeping too little. This page is not medical advice.
Next time
How to not need an all-nighter next time
You avoid the next all-nighter by starting on the day you get the task. Ten hours of work is two hours a day for five days. The study planner splits the hours across your days, and the page on how to stop procrastinating helps if starting is the hard part.
The test
How do you know you no longer need all-nighters?
The test
You handed in your work on time and went to bed at your usual time the night before
for every deadline in 4 weeks.
It is easy to believe you started early when you did not. The hours you planned are easy to remember, and the hours you really worked are easy to forget.
A good way to check is to count your hours of work and sleep from what you write or say about your day. Most journaling apps only ask how your day felt. They do not show how many hours the essay took, or what time you went to bed.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: your study, work, sleep, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see how many hours the work really took, and what time you went to bed each night. Add the work as a habit for the days before the deadline, like “essay 2 hours”. The app ticks it off when the hours you wrote reach it.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Essay0m
- Work0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Essay this week: 0m
On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where the findings come from.
The advice and findings on this page each link to a source below. We read every one for this page, the full text or its summary.
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (read ). NIOSH Training for Nurses on Shift Work and Long Work Hours. Module 7: Napping, an Important Fatigue Countermeasure.
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (read ). What Makes You Sleep?
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (read ). Healthy Sleep Habits.
- Gosselin, D., De Koninck, J. and Campbell, K. (2017). Novel measures to assess the effects of partial sleep deprivation on sensory, working, and permanent memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1607.
- Gais, S., Lucas, B. and Born, J. (2006). Sleep after learning aids memory recall. Learning & Memory, 13(3), 259 to 262.
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, US Department of Transportation (read ). Drowsy Driving.
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (read ). How Much Sleep Is Enough?
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Is 4 hours of sleep enough?What five nights of four hours did to adults in a sleep lab, and what a week of four-hour nights adds up to.
- Sleep debt calculatorA week of bed and wake times in, hours short out.
- How to fix your sleep scheduleA day-by-day plan and a test that tells you it worked.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
How do you pull an all-nighter?
Do the hardest work before 2:00 AM. Take one nap of about twenty minutes, with an alarm. Keep the lights bright, and drink any coffee early in the night. The next day, do not drive until you have slept, and go to bed at your usual time.
Is it better to pull an all-nighter or sleep for a few hours?
Sleeping for a few hours is usually better. In two small studies, students did worse on attention and memory tasks after four hours of sleep. A night with no sleep hurt their scores much more.
Can I drive after an all-nighter?
Not until you have slept. NHTSA, the US road safety agency, advises that teen drivers put off driving until they are well rested. It says a person who is seriously short of sleep can fall asleep for four or five seconds at a time, even after coffee.
How do I keep track of my study hours so I do not need an all-nighter?
A paper calendar works: write the hours you plan for each day, and tick them off. If you want an app, look for one that shows how many hours you really worked each day. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers reads what you write or say about your day and adds up your hours of study, work and sleep each week. A daily study habit is ticked off when your day shows the hours.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.