Sleep: A Necessary Evil OR a Productivity Catalyst?

Everyone can remember the day when we had a night-out before an important presentation, or even before an exam, and then ‘proudly’ telling our colleagues about the same.

To a great extent, this has to do with modern-day culture, where sleep is viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ and more sleep is taken as a sign of laziness. General endeavor is to have the bare minimum sleep to be able to function the next day. (Though, one can wonder, why in that case GOD designed the concept of sleep at all).

Neuroscientists have long deliberated on how much sleep is necessary for an average individual to remain active the following day. Its very common to find individuals sleeping 6.5- 7 hrs a night and still managing to deliver reasonably well. But is that all?

Apart from getting rest, one of the primary functions of sleep is to preserve useful memories and consolidate knowledge gained during the day with existing knowledge. And this actually happens during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep phase which, for majority of individuals, has maximum occurrence between 7th and 8th hour of sleep. 

Courtesy: Mathew Walker

Thus, by denying ourselves the opportunity to sleep less than 8 hours a day, we are denying ourselves a golden opportunity for memory consolidation.

Other part is related to next day performance and ability to focus. As per a survey amongst hundreds of individuals, their sleeping patterns were analyze and were then correlated with their on-job performance. Surprising finding – Average performers were found to be sleeping 6 hrs 45 minutes versus high performers who were found to be sleeping 8 hrs 30 mins (on average).

One of the possible conclusions from this can be that an additional hour of sleep is not a waste of time, but rather an investment of time. Better sleep can no doubt help in a better mood, fresh mind, increased ability to focus and better recollection; which ultimately has a positive impact on performance.

As per Tom Rath, People need 7 hours of sleep just to be in the game the next day and ideally 8 to have enough energy to win. However, as per data, almost 50% of individuals in developed nations fail to get their necessary 7-9 hours of sleep.

Individuals used to less hours of sleep over a period of time acclimate to impaired performance, lower alertness and reduced energy levels; a concept known as baseline resetting. This further leads to lower performance during the day, missed deadlines and carrying work home. This causes further stress, longer working hours and shorter sleep; thus leading to a vicious cycle.

And this has large scale economic repercussions too. As per research (Courtesy: Mathew Walker), lack of sleep costs the American economy $63 billion a year in lost productivity alone, which roughly corresponds to 2% of US annual GDP.

Not only in corporate world, but lack of sleep has major implications for sportspersons too. Sports injuries are directly correlated to lack of sleep. And this realization has actually made sleep an important ingredient of daily routine for all major sportspeople. Tennis superstar Roger Federer, sleeps 11-12 hours a day, without which (as per him) he just doesn’t feel right. 

While there are numerous other implications of lack of sleep like increased probability of many diseases, risk of accident, obesity and even ethical issues, but for brevity sake, will avoid them for now.

But one thing is for sure. Its high high time to get rid of the taboo related to sleep.