Is exhaustion a kind of self-medication?

[elfs]

Is exhaustion a kind of self-medication? I have noticed that when I don't feel well, when I'm tired, when I've been up far past my bedtime, I'm suddenly very productive. It's as if the part of my brain that does the "Ooh, shiny!" distraction gets shut down, and I can do lots of good things. Despite my general run-downedness, I was incredibly productive at work today, solving several major problems with inset floating DIVs and the auto-scroll handler for displaying trees of data.

It's very strange.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

It certainly works that way for me: when I've exhausted myself with worrying to the point that my mind can no longer be in hand-to-hand combat with itself, lots of energy is freed up for, you know, actual stuff.

The other way it works is that I close in on myself before a huge activity spurt.

HTH. I feel for/with you. Depressive periods are not fun, no matter how much work one gets done.

[maellenkleth]

Have noticed this as well, to my general horror. It almost seems that I must embrace the implacability of deadline before I can, in my exhausted befuddlement, actually do any decent writing.

[jenk]

Ayup. I do have to watch to make sure I'm focusing on what's Most Important though. ;)