Cutting the hours of sleep to get more time to work? Is it effective?
Everyone knows that a good night’s sleep is important. Not only, we rest, but the brain also uses this time to defragment the hard drive (our brain) by analyzing and classifying information in the right place. He also takes the time to make brand new bridges, completely new connections that will allow us to run perfectly our new learning.
We can maximize the effect of sleep by doing a nap after a period of intense work (particularly effective around noon). The brain then digests the information, which becomes available after our sleep. In addition, the nap will help us reduce our cortisol levels. We can systematically take a nap just before a stressful event to a halt the production of cortisol.
Lack of sleep affects our cognitive abilities, but how much?
Take the example of a student who always gets ” A ” and still ranks in the top 10% in everything she did. If she sleeps just less than seven hours a night during the week and about 6:20 the weekend, she will see her results fall in the back rows, as people that would normally get results in the lower 10%.
A study on soldiers responsible for operating a military complex showed that after a night’s sleep less, there was a 30% decline in their cognitive abilities coupled with a decline in their performance. After two nights of sleep deprivation, the drop was 60%.
When a person is sleeping less than six hours a night for five consecutive days, we observe the same effects as a person deprived of sleep for 48 hours.
Although sleep is important to maximize the effectiveness of your work. Sleep well and be more efficient than ever.
© Jean-François Desrosby 2019
Biomechanics and performance psychology for musicians and guitarists 