The long night happens to everyone eventually. And the longer you lie there awake when you should be/want to be sleeping, the more things you can think of that you should be getting up to do, since you can't sleep afterall. This most often happens to me the second night after arriving at a new location around the globe. Some call it jetlag, I just call it sleeplessness. And irritating.
Its the lack of productivity that makes my mind go faster and faster as I think of all the details/tasks I have missed or failed to complete, and the urgency to just get up grows. It feels like this is lost or wasted time . . . when there is so much demanding my attention. But the reality is this, that getting up is generally a big mistake, because it will just compound the sleeplessness problem the following nights. Lying in bed in the dark is still rest, regardless of how it feels. But that overpowering feeling of unproductiveness . . .
. . . is simply wrong too, because the busier you are, the dumber you may be. You must resist this lie the most in the modern age, perhaps more than most others, because overclocked schedules keep us from not only not resting well, but from thinking clearly, and of course since I slept so little last night, my thinking processes are even more slowed today. So I must give myself more space and margin today in order to break the cycle of unproductivity tomorrow.
I know that sounds counter-intuitive, and so does my suggestion here, but you have to just relax and live in the moment of the long night. Otherwise it may become a pattern, and that would actually be a real problem.
