In the 1960s and 1970s religious cults used Sleep deprivation to enslave their converts to work more, think less and enslave them. Groups like Scientology still do things like this along with teaching their converts not to trust legal authorities so things like statutory rape and other things can go on unchecked. Corporations and employers now have learned from this where if they keep their employees so busy they cannot sleep (or sleep enough) they can get more done with less back talk or suggestions thereby enslaving their employees sometimes for years at a time while the employees mental and physical health declines.
This Thanksgiving my younger daughter and her roomate in college went to the East Coast to visit the roomates sister who decided to become a cook at a fancy restaurant rather than go to college. But, they found her sister working non-stop 8 am to midnight training new employees and working as a cook, being paid well but burning out because in her own life she no longer had the time to think about "Good decisions" because she wasn't getting enough sleep.
On the way to the airport I was told about this and I said, "She doesn't understand Business. She might understand how to be a good cook but she doesn't understand how businesses enslave people."
When I was 20 years old I wanted to be a computer programmer as I had studied Computer Science in college then. This was 1968. So, I took a job working for a company that did automated accounting using the latest IBM and Univac Computers, scanners and punched card equipment which was how things were done then.
I worked Midnight to noon 7 days a week because they couldn't find enough qualified people in the field to do this kind of work then. A colleague of mine said to me, "Why in God's name are you doing this, Fred? I have a wife and 2 kids and I have to do this. But you are single. Why aren't you having fun instead of working 7 days a week 12 hours a day midnight to noon?"
I told him I was trying to break into the field direct from college. He told me I was crazy.
He was right. Luckily for me (looking back now) I couldn't get enough sleep and couldn't adjust to the midnight to noon schedule and I crashed my brand new 1968 Camaro (which I could afford to buy because I was well paid and bent the front bumper. Luckily neither I or the car I hit injured anyone I just had to replace my bumper and the car's rear bumper in front of me.
However, then I got fired because I had by then lost so much sleep that I was no longer functional at this job. I was 20 and my young ego was devastated.
However, this was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my young life I realize now.
Because I realized I could never do that schedule (Midnight to noon) 7 days a week ever again. And I never did.
At the time it was a severe ego death for me at 20 almost 21 and I never recovered in some ways from this in my young life.
I went an entirely new direction after that realizing I didn't want to work much in computer science after that experience.
I went back to a trade I had learned starting at age 12 with my father who was an electrical contractor. I worked as an electrician's helper for a couple of years instead of my chosen field of computers.
Looking back now I see this was very good for me and reality therapy as opposed to fantasy.
Over time in my late 20s I got a Landscaping Contractor's license with the state of California and worked with Landscape Architects installing creative landscapes in places like Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla, California and if the day was hot sometimes my compatriots and I would take off work and go Scuba diving, Snorkeling or Surfing. This life I loved and could live. But, working 12 hours a day midnight until noon was only a job that would have slowly killed me and taken away my health if I did it long enough, permanently.
In 1979 I took my son who was 4 to Mt. Shasta and helped build a home there for a friend of mine who was a French architect. This led to me getting married again to a lady with 2 kids. Because it was 1980 and unemployment was 10% in the U.S. then like recently during the Great Recession we decided to buy 2 1/2 acres for 8000 dollars and build an A Frame rather than to move back to the SF Bay area right then. We home schooled our children for 5 years remotely and had a wonderful Mt. Shasta Wilderness mountain experience for those 5 years which was the opposite of a sleep deprivation experience. During this time I found myself living my dream of raising my family in the wilderness and teaching them about nature and animals and birds and wildlife.
All these changes slowly turned me into an Entrepreneur which I found to be the best vocation for me of buying businesses and running them myself over time. So, this is what I found I like the best, owning and running businesses. I could then set my time working whenever I wanted it to be and whenever possible take off time whenever I could to enjoy life better. I never really liked working for anyone but myself, my father or friends anyway.
A person's best experiences often come in creative response to ones problems. But, you have to make these decisions not while you are sleep deprived to make the best decisions of your lives.
Rather than being a vocation all the time Computers became a hobby for me in regard to computer programming and computer operations. So, in 1978 when Radio Shack put out the TRS-80 I bought my first computer for 800 dollars it had only 4 k of memory but I taught myself and then my children when they were old enough how to program in Basic. Then in the mid 1980s I bought an IBM Clone PC which was an AT and an Epsom Printer for about 2500 dollars total and taught my children how to use this too with MS Dos. They created their own video games to play through programming them themselves as well as played games that were available as well. And On and on until today here in 2016 including learning how to code in HTML (Hypertextmarkup language) used for writing code for Internet pages.
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