We are living in a rush nowadays. Everything is just so fast-paced. How does it affect our health? When we are always on the move, competing with others in pursuit of a high-quality lifestyle, we tend to compromise on essentials. These essentials include a healthy diet, regular exercise, and enough sleep.
Sometimes we have to put in extra hours at work, compromising our rest time. There’s a direct relationship between the amount of work we do and the hours we sleep. Sleeplessness can lead to increased tiredness, reduced productivity, and shorter attention span, causing mishaps at the workplace.
How does sleeplessness impact work?
We need proper sleep to maintain overall physical and mental health. It reboots our system and helps refresh our minds and bodies. When we sleep, our muscles get relaxed, and the neurons in our brain make our body calm. As a result, the mind and immune systems rejuvenate, enabling us to think clearly, attain new information and manage our emotions in a better way.
An adult needs 7-9 hours of rest a day. If we don’t get enough sleep regularly, we will suffer from sleep deprivation. We will feel exhausted all the time, fatigue will kick in more frequently, and our creativity will diminish. All these negative aspects combined will affect our performance at work.
Sleeplessness makes all of our processes work sub-optimally, and neurons in our brain fail to function properly due to this. In return, our physical reactions get slower, and we are emotionally drained, affecting our decision-making ability.
Negative economic impact
Sleep deprivation massively impacts the economy; the accumulated total is around hundreds of billions each year. When we are not able to function at an optimum level, we are more likely to make workplace errors.
The disaster of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant is one of the biggest examples of such accidents. It affects not only a company’s growth or revenue but also has the tendency to kill people. These are all considered losses in productivity, some are quantifiable, and others are not.
How to improve our job performance with enough sleep?
Work-life balance in current times is inevitable. Constant sleep deprivation can cause mental health issues. It’s the employer’s responsibility to help employees maintain a work-life balance and get enough sleep. It will improve their physical and mental health, resulting in business growth.
Enough sleep, or let’s just say, an extra hour, can improve our job performance.
- It will improve our cognitive abilities like being impatient, lacking concentration, and less productivity. With an extra hour of sleep, we will feel refreshed and active throughout the day.
- A healthy lifestyle has a positive impact on our work performance. When we feel good, we perform well. Lack of sleep can cause high blood pressure, weak immunity, and other health risks. If we are constantly staying unwell, it can cost us our job.
- Scheduling our sleep can be helpful. Today employers are more understanding and lenient towards work-life balance. If we talk and draw a line between work and personal life, we can have enough sleep, which will eventually make us more productive at our jobs.
