Microsleep, A Small Problem But Dangerous

I'm not the type of person who works too hard, I'm also not the type of person who demands to focus on one problem in a long time. Of course it makes me tired. When your fatigue comes, the disease will come so easily, then it also killing your productivity. I see to the most examples, like Japanese people often work outside from their working hours. It even happened when their job is done, they must to respect their senior employees or their boss, to come home late. I think this culture hard to change, But hey its not ! its not my typical dream work culture.

In the end, those who aren’t strong with this culture, they will fall or out from company. Those who are strong in company, they will survive in company in Japan (but still, they won't be strong forever, humans have limits). In Japan, it is commonly called "Karoshi". Karoshi has a huge impact on health and even the death is something that can’t be avoided by workers. This death also caused by suicide, because they aren’t strong enough to standing with situation, they facing deep frustration and cover up incident from family. This is the extreme things, that was ever happened there.

However, I don't want to discuss Japanese work culture so deeply. From the example in above, I want to remind you that they were misunderstanding the meaning of productivity. Actually, good productivity needs to be balanced with good time management. If it's not balanced or you can't be disciplined or you can’t choose when to stop working, you will definitely feel sick. The disease due to over productivity can be various kinds, it such as headaches, loss of concentration and microsleep. Well, I will discuss the microsleep so briefly, even though this disease can’t be considered mild.

Microsleep is a condition where a person can fall asleep within a few seconds. When they find someone in a microsleep condition, they will unconsciously fall asleep. For additional references, you can see (Wikipedia). This disease cannot be underestimated, even though you just feel fall asleep in a few seconds. When this microsleep associated with "Karoshi" in above, where workers often feel microsleep in many times, this will be dangerous that triggers to death. Even microsleep in a single time, it also can be dangerous because you are doing crucial things like riding a motorbike, you will fall and hurt if your focus is lost when driving.

Therefore, this microsleep disease can’t be underestimated and dangerous. Some of cause that you are experiencing with microsleep :
(#) Your sleeping hours reduced,
(#) Your sleeping hours are changing (For example, you get a schedule when working at night),
(#) You feel experiencing the side effects of medicine

(#) You feel insomnia

As a solution to this microsleep disease, if you feel your sleep reduced or changes, then you have to repair your time management and making more sleep and rest, also reduce your work task for a while. If you feel experiencing with side effects from medicine, you need to ask your doctor, so the doctor ensures those side effects are still safe for you. If you feel experiencing with insomnia, you need to go to nearest pharmacy store, to buy anti-insomnia medicine (make sure its safe with a doctor's prescription).

However, if the microsleep occurs many times and you still feel it, you need to consult a doctor to get better handling. I hope that, someone doesn’t misunderstand the meaning of productivity because microsleep and “karoshi” will waiting for you.

Photo Sources :
1. Xframe
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