It may seem like an obvious choice to pull an all-nighter the next time an assignment is due and you haven't started...but wait - think again!
Here's just a few reasons why you shouldn't resort to staying up all night to finish something!
Getting into the habit of staying up all night to study or finish various assignments is a really easy way to end up with poor time-management skills. It comes down to the simple fact that you're not spreading out your study time as it's needed and therefore you won't have the ability to manage your time!
The best way to solve this is to make a study schedule or table, marking out certain days and exact time you will study for. This will help you get into the habit of managing your time much more than pulling an all-nighter will!
It won't come as any surprise that your brain starts to shut down around the same time each night (probably early to late evening for most people). This is because it's used to working hard during the day and then relaxing and unwinding in the evening when you're at home.
So basically if you start studying in the evening, it could be incredibly hard to concentrate because your brain thinks work time is over for the day!
The most obvious problem with pulling all-nighters is that you will most definitely lose plenty of precious sleep! Although some may not think this is a deal-breaker, it's said that we need at least eight hours of decent shut-eye for a reason.
Sleeping for a long length of time gives our brain time to get rid of unimportant data from the day that we don't need and allows us plenty of time to physically rest so that we feel fresh and rejuvenated in the morning!
Many people may think that if you pull an all-nighter to finish an assignment, it's a job well done and that you will do just as well as if you had finished ahead of time. But actually, it's a fact that you won't perform as well on whatever it is you're trying to finish!
Partly this is because you finish at the very last minute and have no time to double check your work - leaving you no time to change anything, erase mistakes or make adjustments. This means you have a much bigger chance of getting a lower grade on it than if you had finished in your own time and could double check before you hand your assignments in.
Pulling an all-nighter can also easily change your sleep cycle. This is definitely something you want to avoid because the end result is that your body will end up being very confused. You will also end up feeling super sleep-deprived and overcome with fatigue because your body can't chop and change your cycle that quickly - it needs time to adjust and adapt to the changes you're making.
Going to sleep at the same time and waking up at the same time is the best way you can manage your sleep cycle and make sure you're looking after your body!
Apart from all the other side effects of pulling an all-nighter, it's just a bad habit to get into all round! Assignments are usually given out with at least a couple of days before the deadline and it's like this for a reason! They do this to discourage students from staying up all night to finish it.
If teachers and professors didn't care how much time you needed, assignments would be due the next day so that you would have no choice but to pull an all-nighter to get it done.
If you're already in the habit of pulling all-nighters, you may find that you're falling behind in multiple classes. You're leaving all the work you need to do until night time...but there's only so many hours in a night, right?
With large assignments, sometimes a single night is actually not enough time to finish it completely, making it really easy for you to fall behind in class.