Don’t accumulate sleep debt! It’s costly.

You have probably heard about the importance of good sleep but is it really that important? Yes, it is!

Tons of research have shown again and again that sleep impacts various aspects of our lives, including our cognitive performance. If you want to study and/or work productively and effectively, sleep is imperative. Being able to survive on a couple of hours sleep equates to being extra-productive and extra hard-working in today’s society. And yet, studies have shown that we perform worse on tests and in our workplaces if we are lacking sleep. For example, an article in the Harvard Business Review, Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer, explains that you average four hours of lseep a night for four or five days, you develop cognitive impairment equivalent to legal drunkenness in the States (or a blood alcohol level of .1%). Your problem solving and critical-thinking abilities are greatly impacted as well.

Another study showed that an A student getting less than 7 hours on weekends will begin scoring in the bottom 9 percent of non-sleep-deprived peers!

And yes, you can accumulate sleep debt – researchers say. If you don’t catch up on your sleep, you will be carrying your sleep debt and as you can now see, it will be costly.

Contributed by Alla Volodina