Choosing colleagues over perfect sleep

I generally try to live a healthy life. I exercise, I try to eat well, I protect my sleep (or at least, I track my sleep debt and then feel guilty about it), and I know that all these habits make me a better researcher, teacher, and human. During regular weeks at home, I value structure: waking up early, and keeping my routines in place.

And then conference travel happens.

Suddenly, the carefully built schedule disappears. Dinner starts late, conversations stretch longer than expected, and someone suggests “just one more drink” with colleagues you may not see again for another year. Your flight is at 7 a.m., your alarm is set for 4:30, and the healthiest decision would clearly be to excuse yourself and go to bed.

But sometimes, I stay.

Not because I have forgotten the importance of sleep, but because I know I can catch up on sleep later. What I cannot easily recreate is that spontaneous conversation at midnight with a colleague from another continent, the laughter after a long conference day, or the unexpected discussion that inspires me.

Academia is built as much in these informal moments as it is in formal presentations.

Of course, this does not mean abandoning all healthy habits every time you travel. Conferences are already demanding: long days, social overload, travel fatigue, and often too much coffee and too little water. There is value in protecting your energy where you can. Sometimes the right choice is absolutely to skip the late-night drinks and rest.

But sometimes (or even, often) the right choice is the opposite.

I think we can become a little too attached to optimization. We want the perfect morning routine, the perfect sleep schedule, the perfect productivity system. We start to treat every deviation as failure. Life does not work that way.

Sometimes, you miss your workout because you had a meaningful dinner conversation. Sometimes, breakfast is whatever is available at the airport. Sometimes, your body needs rest, and sometimes your professional and personal life benefits more from shared experiences than from another perfectly tracked night of sleep.

Rolling with the punches is part of academia. Conferences, deadlines, teaching weeks, grant seasons; they all come with periods where balance looks different. Instead of asking whether every choice is the healthiest possible one, I try to ask whether it is the right choice for that moment.

Often, the answer is yes.

Ultimately, one of the great advantages of academic life is flexibility. As professors, we often have more control over our schedules than many other professions. We can recover after travel. We can work from home when needed. We can choose how to structure our days. And: we should place everything in perspective. Since collegiality is important to me, I’d rather show up for the beers.

That flexibility is not only there to make us more productive: it is also there to help us live well.

So yes, protect your health. Build good habits. Prioritize sleep most of the time. But also give yourself permission to enjoy the conference dinner, stay for the extra conversation, and choose connection over perfection once in a while.

Your inbox will still be there tomorrow. That colleague from overseas may not.