6 Ways Sleep Can Make You More Successful

There’s a big problem with the way some people are expected to work — without sleep. So many are not only asked but expected to work overtime. People take work home with them, it keeps them awake at night, stressed about tomorrow. But many old-school bosses and employers see this as necessary, there’s an odd view that if you’re sleeping you’re not working.

That might be entirely wrong. Now, I’m not going to claim that you are somehow working while you’re off in dreamland, but that just might be the case. Sleeping is important for a number of reasons, think about how fresh you are when you wake up, think about those “a-ha” moments of insight that often come when our minds are at ease and not swamped with work. It might be that resting your head makes you better at your job, and who could argue that that’s not working?

An article on the Huffington Post is exploring this ability for sleep to make you more successful:

Sleep Makes You More Receptive to Learning

As many successful business people will say, one important aspect of success is to constantly be growing and learning new things. For students, of course, learning is the entire purpose of school and necessary for doing well.

According to the Harvard Healthy Sleep website, a lack of sleep reduces attention and motivation making it harder to acquire new information. Sleep also plays a role in the consolidation of new memories, which enables you to recall that information later on.

Research has shown REM and slow wave sleep are both important for declarative memory (facts) and procedural memory (how to). Studies of sleep and learning show the biggest effects when trying to learn or recall information when sleep deprived (as opposed to learning and then being deprived of sleep).

So the next time your boss has you sit in on a meeting, tell them immediately afterwards that you need some sleep, otherwise you won’t remember anything. Check out the full article for the others ways sleep enhances your chance at success.