It’s Sunday morning. You lie in bed, hugging the covers to yourself as you casually slip between dreams, punctuated by rolling from one side to the other. Your bed is warm, your blanket cozy and the room is still. Even the weather is collaborating with you; the overcast sky blocks the piercing rays of sunlight from your room.

Eventually, you glance at your cell phone or clock and realize that your lazy morning has transitioned to a lazy afternoon, and half the day is already gone. Immediately thoughts of all the work that needs to get done floods the mind, coupled with regret that you can’t stay in such a lovely comfortable state all day. But we’re adults—supposed to live productive lives and finish things like responsible people.

Obviously, this exact instance happened to me recently. I spent the rest of the day trying my hardest to make up for those lost hours, knowing if I had another two hours in the day I could have started a paper or gotten some reading done. At the end of the day, exhausted from how much effort I put into the hours from noon to midnight, I returned to my bed, which wasn’t as warm as when I left it. I wondered why I had ever left it and whether the work I had done today was really worth ever leaving.

How hard do we have to work every day? Not every day do I stay in bed until lunch; sometimes that morning coffee inspires me to practice, read and hit up Lund before my first class. Wondering what constitutes a successful day is worth thinking about, though.

When do we feel like we’ve had a good day? Good days can be inspired by a good score on a test, a particularly good meal, a good conversation with a friend or simply doing good work. Why then, don’t we have good days every day?

Maybe something bad comes up. Coffee spills, toes get stubbed or your daily routine gets interrupted by the unexpected struggle. The trivial annoyances seem to collude against you, so their individual petty insignificance seem to multiply together. Suddenly the day gets harder, like plodding through mud instead of skating on ice.

Interestingly enough, research in the field of cognitive neuroscience indicates that the feeling like you can exert your will doesn’t come from having some resolute spirit or being a “strong’” person, but actually is something like an on-off switch in your brain. Feeling like we can do things is determined more by our brain activity than by something you directly control, meaning that some days, the things that usually make you feel motivated simply might not work.

Conversely, some days you’ll just feel like doing things even if the coffee tastes like burnt cigarettes and someone cuts you off in traffic. It’s just the way our brains work.

So how hard do we have to try? On those days where even our brains want us to stay in bed, how much do we need to push ourselves to accomplish anything?

Sadly, for we late sleepers, the answer is not just staying in bed. For all the health benefits of sleep, getting out of bed is better for you than staying in it. It’s just not as easy as it was in middle school when you could fake being sick and spend the day playing video games (years later—the truth slips out! Sorry, Mom!).

There are plenty of good reasons to be alive too—carpe diem! Maybe on a tough day you can indulge yourself a little more if only to rouse that cluster of neurons that will make everything flow easier. The next time I have a late sleep on a Sunday morning, I’m definitely going to use that excuse to eat some dark chocolate while writing that paper and, if I need to, take a break from studying to bake bread. No reason you can’t enjoy the luxuries of life on a hard day, right?