Fatigue taxes pay and pension accrual. In the long run, bad dreams can cost up to hundreds of thousands of euros, writes Merja Mähkä.
The consequences of union problems can be manifold. Sergey Mironov / Sergeymironov.com, Mostphotos
I ran into a childhood friend. We talked about work – and more. He said he had been working part-time for a long time due to sleep difficulties. Fewer working hours leave more time to sleep, but most of all, they reduce the amount of work that is mourning away.
I was left to ponder the fate of a friend. She has always loved her job and is super good, happy and efficient at it. He belongs to the boss tube that takes you all the way to the top. Just the type you would like to be a boss: fair, determined, and consistent. But no. The career we all imagined for him was not possible because of the fear of eternal fatigue.
Of course, reduced working hours mean lower pay. It also has far-reaching consequences that are not being noticed at the moment. Pension accumulation will be leaner, as will the chances of saving for the future on your own.
In the case of my childhood friend working as an expert, the amount of my own lost pension savings alone could be around EUR 200 000. (I made the calculation assuming that € 200 of the higher salary would be left to be invested with the average return on the stock exchange for 25 years.)
At the other end of the boss tube are then the people who can sleep anywhere. An example is the former CEO of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuowhich aptly named in his biography The phone rings at night (Otava) tells Nokia management about manic travel. We left Helsinki in the early evening for Asia, where we arrived at local time in the morning. From there, the work day started the same way I did, the minute schedule went from morning to night for a few days, and then back on the plane or somewhere else.
You can only handle such a rumba if you can sleep when you want. For those with sleep disorders, such a lifestyle would be an impossibility. For me, just the fact that I sometimes work in the hurry in the evenings makes such a buzz in my head that it is difficult to sleep in my own bed.
Sleep scientists explain bad dreams by evolution. In a state of pressure, a person goes into a fight or flight mode, where the nervous system is activated and the body releases energy. Cavemen benefited from this feature: when a saber-toothed tiger encounters, it is indeed better to either fight or escape. The translators of the side were eaten.
Today’s work worries are less fatal, but still our bodies respond to them like a saber-toothed tiger. Stress hormone is secreted, the heart beats, and blood is directed to the muscles. Lucky are those who have an innate ability to turn themselves to another frequency and find that let this concern be dealt with in order then in the morning and refreshed.
CEOs of large companies have this ability. Kallasvuoto is amused by the way journalists ask managers about how they can withstand the pressures of work. Well of course!
According to Kallasvuo, for example, people who do customer service work may experience much greater pressure in their work than CEOs responsible for billions of euros and thousands of jobs. Mäkkär’s cash desk or the corner room of a glass office building – it’s up to the type and not the dune to see if it’s experiencing pressure.
I’m starting to think that the ability to shed worries by going to bed is a prerequisite for being able to take your own career and salary development to the end, that is, where your own gifts and motivation would suffice. Those who sleep well always have an advantage. In bad dreams, career and salary development do not materialize to their full potential.
We live in a time where sleep is already appreciated and various sleep tips are available everywhere. Some of them may even improve your sleep, but for those who have already experienced sleep difficulties, they are mostly annoying. Sleep will not come by going to bed earlier or putting blackout curtains on the window.
I think Kallasvuo’s thoughts on pressure tolerance and dreams were comforting. Dreams are not self-contained, and a career that is lacking because of them is not a failure.