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On Call Sleep Question (monero.town)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/sysadmin

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If you are on call and you receive a call at say 3:45 am and you resolve the issue by 4:30 am. Is it then worth trying to go back to sleep to wake up for work the next day or should you just stay awake and power through it?

I'm asking because this happened to me and I went back to bed, did not feel tired at all and when I eventually fell asleep I got maybe an hour of extra sleep and I felt like complete garbage when my alarm went off and pretty much like that for the remainder of the day. Whereas I feel like if I just stayed awake for the extra time after 4:30 am I might have not felt as bad?

What are your opinions on this?

Edit: I'm appreciating all the responses and taking the information in. Sounds like this is not a clear cut case that is a simple yes do this or no don't do that.

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[–] TootSweet 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Sorry to say I don't have any good answers about this. When midnight on-call calls became a fairly regular occurrence for me, I quit my job to go somewhere it wouldn't be any significant issue.

But if it helps, I've always gone back to bed after a call and laid there trying to fall asleep until either I fell asleep and got a little bit of extra sleep or my alarm went off and I had to work. I always felt like crap when I did, but I doubt I'd have felt any less bad had I stayed up instead. My theory was that even if staying up might be preferable at the time, going back to bed, even if I only got an hour of sleep, would be better for me (at least in terms of not shortening my lifespan as much) in the long run.

(Full disclosure, I'm a coder, not a sysadmin, but they were taking DevOps pretty seriously, so I was on call for the applications my team maintained.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Mmm I guess it's a give and take scenario with the lifespan analogy. I think I feel more useless to the business as I sit there feeling ever so much more tired throughout the workday and the struggle to focus increases throughout the day. Thanks for the input!

[–] TootSweet 1 points 6 months ago

I didn't intend for the "lifespan" bit to be an analogy. I meant that sleep deprivation will literally shorten one's life. Especially if it's a frequent occurrence. When it comes to things like 3:00am calls, I'll prioritize my health over my usefulness to the business any day.