For years, I’ve slept six hours a night during the week, while working for a corporation. It wasn’t good sleep for a bunch of reasons. I could visibly see my performance decreasing. At that point I was considering sleep a waste of time because I thought I could use those two hours saved from sleeping just six instead of eight, to do something else. That was until I found out how sleep affects performance.
According to studies, two weeks of 6h of sleep per night degrades your performance to the level of someone who experienced sleep deprivation for 24 hours. Four hours of sleep per night for 2 weeks degrades your performance to the level of someone who got sleep deprived for 48 hours. Can you imagine the effects on any kind of performance?
Statistically, people who don’t get enough sleep, report difficulties focusing (29%), losing interest in activities (19%), falling asleep at inappropriate times (16%), losing temper (16%) and other undesired behaviours.
How sleep works
There are two types of sleep: REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM (which has 3 stages). According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, these are the four stages of sleep (3 non-REM and 1 REM):
Stage 1 of non-REM sleep – lasts several minutes, light sleep, your body slows down its heartbeat and breathing, muscles relax. This is when you might twitch before ‘falling asleep’.
Stage 2 of non-REM sleep – light sleep before the deep sleep. Your body continues to slowdown and muscles relax further. Body temperature drops. This is where most of our time is usually spent.
Stage 3 of non-REM sleep – this is the part you need in order to feel refreshed and be able to say you’ve slept well. It’s usually difficult to awake someone who’s in this phase.
REM sleep takes place in the first 90 minutes after you fall asleep. Breathing becomes faster, and your body functions resume close to their ‘awake’ state. Most of your dreaming takes place during this phase. With age, this phase becomes shorter.
During the night, you go through all stages of non-REM and REM sleep several times, with longer REM periods toward the morning. That’s why you may wake up while you were just dreaming about something.
Why sleep is important for performance
Total sleep deprivation affects the functions of your frontal lobe of the brain. That affects attention, cognitive functions, decision making, alert state. That is why total sleep deprivation resembles the effects of excessive drinking (which also damages the frontal lobe). From a brain’s damage perspective, staying up for 24 hours is the same as getting drunk: you’ll be cognitively impaired.
According to a study performed by Michigan State University, sleep deprivation doubles the odds of making place keeping errors and triples the number of attention errors. Sleep interruption increases errors with 15%, while sleep deprivation with 30%.
During sleep, your brain gets rid of toxins, including proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease. Simply put, your whole body repairs itself during the night. So, let me ask you at this point: would you go to work drunk? And expect to perform? If not, then you need to get your rest.
What do we usually do when we don’t get enough sleep? Besides looking ‘zombie chic’, we add in more caffeine and more sugar… On top of that, add multitasking.
What’s in it for you?
Here’s what you gain if you sleep 8h per night:
Better memory – deep sleep (non-REM stage 3) consolidates memories for long-term storage. This implies the ability to recall accurately and use those memories in your activity.
Creativity increases twice according to a a study from University of Lübeck in Germany.
Increased focus
Better mood which in turn helps with empathy and lowers stress.
Reduced anxiety – the University of California, Berkley discovered that sleep deprivation for 24h increases anxiety with 30% the next day.
The way sleep affects performance is outstanding. The first step in benefiting from it is accepting its importance and booking its proper time in your daily schedule. Although it may look like you leave less time for other activities, your performance will actually increase while keeping your body in shape.
