It’s currently 3 AM and I’m experiencing one of those nights
we all have, where, for whatever reason I simply cannot sleep. There’s a
million things swirling about in my head, so I thought if I could just focus on
ONE subject…one idea, I might be able to calm my thoughts and find a restful
moment to fall into that wonderful subconscious state we refer to as sleep…
Over the years I’ve heard about Einstein who thought sleep
was a waste of time only logging in about 4 hours a night, while Bill Gates is
said to get 7 hours. In a recent article in The Harvard Business News found
that 43% of business leaders they polled indicated that they were sleep
deprived at least 4 times a week.
Research shows that getting less that 7 hours of sleep can
impair an individual’s performance level to that of a blood alcohol level of
.05% , the legal drinking limit in many countries. Four hours of sleep renders
that same person’s performance with that of someone with a blood alcohol level
of 0.1% which is the legal definition of being drunk in the US.
There is an abundance of research that suggests that sleep
has an impact on all stages of learning, on making decisions, and tasks that
require integrating multiple emotional responses. The less sleep you get, the
more difficult the task. One study
showed that a good night’s sleep can lead to new insights, to the degree that
participants who enjoyed a good night’s sleep were twice as likely to discover
a hidden short-cut or a creative solution as those who didn’t.
Perhaps it’s a waste of time NOT to get enough sleep as the
hours awake are more difficult to maneuver when sleep deprived…perhaps my mom
was right after all when she would advise to “sleep on it” before making that
tough decision…sleep on it…ahhhhhh…sounds like a great idea…g’nite all
Be good to yourself…
No comments:
Post a Comment