A good night of snoozing can define the way you spend the rest of your day. Not getting enough sleep will often result in trouble when concentrating, learning new skills, and will decrease your overall performance at work and other areas of your life. You can’t be your best self when you don’t get enough sleep, and at the same time, your risk of developing health issues later in life increases.
So, what happens when you don’t sleep enough, and how does it hurt your efficiency at work?
3 ways sleep deprivation affects your performance at work
According to a 2006 study from the Institute of Medicine, around 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from sleep-related problems. Many negative effects are related to sleep deprivation. Some of them will affect your daily life, while others will specifically be bad for your productivity at work.
Sleep deprivation makes you more likely to make errors
When you sleep, your brain restores energy to your body’s cells, clears waste, and performs important tasks like regulating your mood. If you don’t sleep enough, you are not letting your brain recover appropriately, creating a myriad of negative effects that affect your productivity, like:
- Shorter attention span
- Slower reaction times
- Impulsive behavior
All of this can slow down the rate at which you get your work done and even lead to dangerous outcomes. Sleep deprivation is one of the leading causes of driving accidents in the United States, according to the National Safety Council.
Not enough sleep leads to concentration problems
Scientists have found that sleepiness can generate lower concentration and alertness. When you can’t concentrate, performing tasks that require logical and complex thought can become a lot more difficult.
Sleep deprivation also hurts your memory since your brain uses the time you are asleep to strengthen the connections that make your memories. If your sleep cycle is not long enough or is disrupted often, your memory will become weaker. This means that learning new skills becomes more complicated and that you will become more prone to forgetting and misplacing things more frequently.
Lack of sleep will make you more irritable
When you don’t sleep enough, your body increases the cortisol levels present in your system. Cortisol is the hormone related to stress, making you more susceptible to:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Muscle tension
- Headaches
Being in an irritable state of mind can also lead to a worse emotional climate at work, making it harder to work as a team with your coworkers and to focus on your own tasks.
All of this can be avoided with one good night of sleep. When you sleep enough, your brain decreases your cortisol levels and releases other hormones that are good for your body and are responsible for controlling your mood, regulating your appetite, and healing your body.
Conclusion
Sleep deprivation can become an endless loop if you don’t take action. It is common to cut down on sleep when you don’t achieve as much as you expected at work, decreasing your productivity and forcing you to stay up later to compensate.
Reducing the amount of caffeine that you consume, meditating before going to bed, and having a dependable sleeping schedule are techniques that can help you avoid sleep deprivation. You can also try the Feelzing Energy Patch. This is a neurostimulation patch that stimulates your nervous system without using chemicals. The Feelzing Energy Patch will give you a 4-hour energy boost, helping you focus on the activities that matter for you without affecting your sleep cycle at night.