Americans are chronically sleep deprived. Learn how this impacts your home office productivity
Home Office Productivity is Supported by Good Sleep
How Much Sleep Do You Need? Is a short (3 ½ minute) animated video by the guys at ASAPScience. See how test subjects responded to 8, 6 and 4 hours of sleep a night over 14 days.
People who got 8 hours of sleep a night performed well on cognitive and reaction tests. People who got only 4 hours of sleep a night ended up falling asleep while doing their cognitive tests.
Home office productivity suffers when you work sleep-deprived.
The big surprise was the effect of 6 hours of sleep over 14 days. Test subject’s reaction times were the equivalent to being legally drunk (a blood level of 0.1%). How can you make sound decisions, participate in team processes and keep tabs on the myriad details of your work life when you are functionally “intoxicated”? No organizing system can compensate for that.
Home Office Productivity Suffers. Only six hours of sleep a night is the same as working as if your were legally drunk.
Short-term sleep deprivation leads to “sleep debt”. This can be erased with a few good nights of sleep. Long-term sleep debt takes much longer to reverse. There is concern that extended sleep deprivation may lead to irreversible brain changes.
People who are sleep deprived over time are less aware they are functioning below their peak performance for home office productivity. They think they are doing fine.
The negative health effects for ongoing sleep debt:
- increased rates of heart disease,
- obesity,
- diabetes and
- mortality.
Obesity occurs when your brain chemicals send hunger signals, you eat thinking you need food for energy, when you are actually hungry for sleep. Of note: similar health issues occur when people sleep too much.
Read on to see how to work at your brain’s peak performance
- How to “sleep on it” and improve your creativity and problem-solving skills
- How to work with your brain’s peak performance.
- And How to help you and your family transition to a restful evening and a good night’s sleep.
Here is the video on How Much Sleep Do You Need?
To learn more about how to improve your home office and your workday get your own copy of The Smarter Home Office: 8 Simple Steps to Increase Your Income, Inspiration and Comfort. Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
Hat tip to Co-Design
