Let me tell you, the vast majority of people never figure out one thing in their lives: your physical condition directly determines your judgment, willpower, emotions, and life trajectory. This is not some health-boosting chicken soup; it’s a fundamental rule validated countless times, but almost no one truly takes it seriously.

Many people have a good foundation, a good temper, solid education, and methodical ways of doing things, but at some stage in life, they suddenly start to decline—career setbacks, relationship breakdowns, everything feels uninspired. They blame bad luck, unfavorable circumstances, or not trying hard enough. But few realize: it might be because you haven’t slept well for several months in a row.
I have deep personal experience with this. There was a period when I only slept five hours a night, relying on coffee to get through the day, thinking I was giving my all. After about a month, I became extremely indecisive when making decisions, easily irritable when talking to people, and everything seemed to go wrong. It wasn’t until I slept ten hours on the weekend and went out for brunch that my mind suddenly cleared, and I realized those decisions weren’t really thought out—they were just the product of a tired brain randomly typing.
Experts call this “sleep deprivation.” People who experience sleep deprivation show decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational judgment, emotional control, and short-term planning. In other words, someone who is chronically sleep-deprived physically no longer has the capacity to make correct decisions. But they are often completely unaware of this because sleep deprivation also impairs their ability to assess their own state. You think you’re okay, but in reality, you’re already in bad shape.
The most frightening thing about this state is that it’s chronic and hidden, giving no clear warning signals. You won’t suddenly collapse; you just become more irritable than usual, more prone to giving up, more likely to make shortsighted choices. Small errors might not seem significant in the short term, but over three months, six months, a year, your quality of life visibly declines, and you won’t know why.
Many people treat willpower as a purely mental attribute, thinking they just need to grit their teeth and persist. This is a huge misconception. Willpower is fundamentally a physiological resource, directly related to your endocrine levels, sleep quality, and inflammation markers. If you push yourself to stay awake to work overtime on a project, it may look like you’re fighting hard, but the quality of what you produce drops dramatically. Plus, the recovery cost far exceeds the extra hours you put in—no matter how you count it, it’s a loss.
I’ve observed that those around me who maintain high-level output over the long term, regardless of personality, temper, or education, share one common trait: it’s not about staying up late or enduring hardship, but about having a near-strict awareness of their physical state. They treat sleep as a serious matter—not something to do after finishing everything else, but as a non-negotiable step. They go to sleep when it’s time, and then focus their energy on fighting again. This may look like they’re not pushing hard, but they can sustain this state for ten years. Young people who burn out by overworking often don’t make it past thirty.
Another severely underestimated factor is exercise. I’m not talking about gym workouts to get six-pack abs, but the most basic: walking for half an hour daily or running for twenty minutes. The impact of this on brain restructuring is so significant that many people find it hard to believe. Consistent recovery exercise promotes the secretion of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which directly participates in the growth and repair of brain neurons and increases mitochondrial numbers. Simply put: exercise physically acts as maintenance and upgrade for your brain.
I have a friend, a programmer, who a few years ago was so anxious it started affecting his work. He tried therapy and medication, with limited results. Later, he started running three kilometers every morning. After two months, he told me he felt like a different person. Not a complete transformation, but he noticed better focus when coding, no longer losing it immediately when encountering bugs, and his emotional baseline was raised.
This is not an isolated case. Numerous clinical studies have confirmed that regular exercise can improve mild to moderate depression and anxiety to a level comparable to or even surpassing medication. Yet most people would rather spend hundreds on supplements and health products than spend twenty minutes a day going for a walk. Because walking isn’t cool, sweating isn’t high-tech, and it looks too simple to be effective.
The human brain has a huge bug: it tends to overestimate the value of complex big words and underestimate the power of simple things. Someone who says they meditate daily, take ten supplements, shower with cold water, and do extreme reviews sounds very disciplined. But if they only sleep five hours a night, then their remaining self-discipline is basically just putting a fresh coat of paint on a cracked foundation—looks good, but useless.
We recommend very specific, even somewhat boring, actions: sleep at least seven hours every night; move for at least twenty minutes daily. If you can do these consistently for three months, you’ll find that those problems you once lacked the energy to tackle suddenly seem trivial. Poor execution, procrastination, anxiety—these might not be psychological issues at all, but signals your body is sending for help. And you’ve been mistaking these signals for character flaws to criticize yourself.
This awareness may seem too simple, so simple that hardly anyone takes it seriously. But think back—when was the last time you slept seven hours for a whole week? When was the last time you sweated lightly for over twenty minutes every day? If you can’t do that, then when facing new challenges, you don’t need some profound methodology. You just need to fix your standby mode first—your body is your primary productivity.