Last night we had a major emergency at work that caused me basically to stay up all night helping to fix it. At first my initial reaction was extreme frustration over my day job’s continued ability to interfere with my family time. But as the night went on you realize that there’s nothing you can do about it and you just give up fighting it since you’re so tired. The hard part is that it can spill over until the next day and depending on your daily responsibilities can throw your whole week out of whack. I think everybody would agree that sleep is an important component to our overall health, and that most people probably don’t get enough of it. I know that I definitely do not, and the older I’ve gotten the harder it’s become for me to sleep longer. I’m not sure if it has to do with age or the fact that I need all the spare time I can get. Either way, I’m starting to feel the affects of my lack of sleep in my behavior.
There’s little doubt that lacking sleep can cause you to be cranky or moody. I think the bigger issue is that it can cause you to be unproductive or ineffective in your daily activities. Whether it’s work, school, or just normal errands, your brain is always working. When you’re lacking sleep, your brain doesn’t function at full capacity and your ability to process information suffers. This can make routine things seem challenging or overly complicated. Plus it can take the ability to retain new information away at least partially. Even if you think you’re able to work through the fatigue, once you do sleep and get that rest a lot of what you experienced will be a blur.
In my school and work experience I’ve noticed how much sleep (or lack of it) has helped or hurt my performance. I had a college professor that told me it was more important to get a good night’s sleep the day before a test than it was to cram all night. Obviously, you can’t just not study or pay attention and expect to ace the test with just a solid night’s rest. You have to know something about the subject matter. But when in doubt, make sure you get a solid 8 hours of sleep the night before a test. I’ve been a notoriously good test taker throughout my school experiences and a lot of it has to do with my insistence on getting a lot of rest the night before.
Getting the right amount of sleep is imperative to being able to perform at a high level on a daily basis. As a society I think most adults are sleep-deprived (especially in America’s workaholic culture) and it probably contributes a great deal to some of our behavioral issues. I struggle with setting aside time to sleep due to my hectic schedule, but whenever I do I always wonder why I don’t do it more often. Try it yourself and see if it changes your perception on how much sleep you should be getting.
