All-Nighters Are Black Swans, So Insure Your Body

When something urgent lands at work and there is no time to prepare, so you stay up all night, that is a black swan.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

Nobody plans an all-nighter. You never say, it is Wednesday, I think I will pull one tonight. Your boss drops a task, your professor says it is due tomorrow, a bug keeps you until 3 a.m. You cannot predict when it comes, but you know it will come.

So how do you deal with a black swan? With the black swan method.

I think about this from Taleb’s angle. Before writing The Black Swan he was a Wall Street trader, and later he became a scholar of risk. His point is that you should not try to predict black swans. You should make yourself robust to them, and better, antifragile. Robust means the shock does not break you. Antifragile means the shock makes you stronger.

How? Buy insurance, for example.

Not real insurance, of course. Insurance for your body, for your health, for your vitality and energy.

Most people skip exercise, sleep badly, and eat whatever is around. Then the black swan arrives, they stay up one night, day two is gone, day three is recovery, and the whole week’s output disappears. That is fragile.

You pay the premium in ordinary weeks. Exercise is one premium, a base of cardio fitness keeps your brain working through the night and speeds up recovery. Sleep quality is another, less screen time before bed and a dark room. A food floor is the third, at least one real meal a day with protein and vegetables. The time and energy you put in on normal days is what lets you file a claim when the black swan shows up.

Taleb also has the barbell strategy, put your resources at the two ends and not in the middle. For energy, that means being very conservative most days, protecting sleep and health, while keeping the ability to go all out when it matters. The worst place is the middle, a little late every night, not much movement, mediocre food. Nothing looks wrong, until the moment you need to sprint and cannot.

The frame helps in one more way. If you see exercise and sleep as wellness, they stay optional, something for after this busy stretch. If you see them as premiums, they are a bill you pay every month.

And on the night you do stay up, there is no guilt. You are not overdrawing. You are using insurance you already bought.

How you actually do the work matters.