Studies indicate that the effects of sleeplessness in terms of diminished capacities are similar to drug use and drunkenness
Would you let someone drink and drive? You certainly would want the people who drive your business fortunes to be sober while at work. People never boast about taking important decisions while drunk, but sleepless nights are worn as badges of honour. In fact, many see the long hours and all-nighters they put in as the reason to be lauded, promoted and pushed up the ladder of success.
In a blog post titled ‘Change the world and go to bed by 10.00’ in Harvard Business Review, Editor Julia Kirby makes a case for corporate leaders to push for a culture that gives sleep the importance it deserves. She terms sleep as the third leg, along with nutrition and exercise, on which good health rests. Corporate bosses, she says, are just in the right position to encourage their employees to make good sleep habits a priority. It also makes good business sense as it will reap benefits in terms of higher productivity, lowered health care costs and happier employees.
In a blog post titled ‘Change the world and go to bed by 10.00’ in Harvard Business Review, Editor, Julia Kirby makes a case for corporate leaders to push for a culture that gives sleep the importance it deserves. She terms sleep as the third leg, along with nutrition and exercise health rests
Studies indicate that the effects of sleep-lessness in terms of diminished capacities are similar to drug use and drunkenness. Have you ever wrestled with a problem all evening; give it up to tiredness, only to come back the next morning with a great solution? Why we need to sleep may be a mystery yet, but a report in the Science Magazine says that the metabolic waste products of the brain are cleared much faster during sleep than while awake. There are other studies that prove how sleep cements the fragile memories/learning that happened prior to sleeping.
May be a cleaner brain is like a newly washed windscreen of the car and just enables us to see everything more clearly, or once the waste is removed, the brain repairs itself much faster. We often talk of the importance of sleep vis-a-vis little children, but adults need enough sleep as well. While the number of hours per day varies from person to person, Dr Gregg Jacobs of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in a piece in BBC, says that his research throws up seven as the magic number.
Whatever your number, that sleep is important to function, is a given. With World Sleep Day on the 18th of March, it may be just the right time to start giving sleep its due in the corporate bottom-line.
By Suchismita Pai
