Ways Sleep Affects Your Work

“It’s been a hard day’s night, and I been working like a dog

It’s been a hard day’s night, I should be sleeping like a log”

These lines from a Beatles’ song echo what every working individual feels at the end of a tiresome workday — to submit themselves to the temptation of a sound sleep at night. In reality, a lot of them don’t get it.

Due to high stress in personal and professional life, the number of people suffering from some form of insomnia has gone up. People are opting for stress relieving exercises, nerve relaxing medications, meditation and other modern methods but none of these offer a permanent solution to troubled sleeping habits.

Many others claim that all they require in a roof overhead and a bed, but, they perhaps should not take the ‘bed’ factor so lightly. After all, not all beds can give you the same comfort or coziness or allow your body to relax in the same way that French style four post beds do.

Sleep deprivation is frequently held responsible as the root cause of several health conditions. However, you may not have any idea that it may also affect your professional life in the following ways.

• Sleep deprivation bringing down the economic growth indicator: A recent study shows that sleep deprivation among employees is not just affecting one employer but it is costing the entire economy billions of pounds due to loss of productivity. Employees who have difficulty in falling asleep or wake up several times in a night cost more than 7 days worth of productivity in a year.
• Takes a toll on creativity: A relaxed mind is more creative than a tired one. Scientists are of opinion that without adequate sleep, brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is directly responsible for innovation and creative thinking, is affected. It implies not only serious decline of creative capabilities but also severe impairment of work-related objectives.
• Decline of individual growth prospect: Cutting short the resting hours is widely associated with entrepreneurial endeavor and corporate aggression towards individual growth.  The real-world findings indicate that employees, who enjoy adequate sleep after work, usually end up earning 16 percent more wages in the long-run than those, who opt for lesser hours of sleep.
• Loss of work memory capacity: Problem solving skills, ability to take informed decisions at the right time, prompt comprehension and apt use of vocabulary – the umbrella term for these qualities is Work Memory Capacity. A study conducted by a group of researches in the Michigan State University indicates that professionals, who enjoy adequate sleep, experience improved Work Memory Capacity.
• Job burnout issues: Sleeping for less than six hours increases the risk of job burnout among employees. It means people cannot detach themselves from work related pressure even in their leisure time. Job burnout problems may disrupt employees’ work-life balance and finally start affecting their productivity, despite their sincere efforts.

You may not have an instant solution to sleep deprivation, but you can at least start with finding the right bed for yourself to sleep on.