Losing More Than Just A Little Sleep

1 min

Researchers at the University of South Florida have found that losing even a little sleep can impair judgement at work, so you don’t perform as well as usual. This finding came from a survey of 130 healthy, middle-aged information technology workers who were interviewed about their sleep to determine when they went to bed, woke up and how well they slept. The researchers interviewed the study participants daily for eight days to find out how they assessed their job performance the day after sleep loss. The study showed that when the participants lost 16 minutes sleep at night or woke 19 minute earlier than usual, their job performance wasn’t up to par, a circumstance that raised their stress levels. The researchers suggested that employers make efforts to promote their employees sleep and noted that “good sleepers may be better performers at work due to greater ability to stay focused and on-task with fewer errors and interpersonal conflicts.”

Source:
Soomi Lee et al, “Bidirectional associations of sleep with cognitive interference in employees’ work days, » Sleep Health, March 22, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.sleh.2019.01.007

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