The Truth About Sleep and Productivity

As a caring teacher, I couldn't help but try and encourage them to do things to help them be better, happier, healthier, and more productive students. I still can't assign them articles like this, but I hope that my students and whoever else happens across this blog will still take the time to think about this and help themselves out by getting enough sleep every night. It makes a HUGE difference for kids and teens, but also for adults. It's worth it!

The Truth About Sleep and Productivity
By Margaret Heffernan

To be honest, this wasn't really new information for me. But it still is good to be reminded of it and see research on it and an explanation of why it is true.

Some of the important excerpts from it:

• Lose just one night's sleep and your cognitive capacity is roughly the same as being over the alcohol limit. 
• Up to around 40 hours a week, we're all pretty productive but, after that, we become less able to deliver reliable, cost-effective work. 
• After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. (That's why you crave donuts and candy.) 
• But the loss isn't shared equally; the parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex lose 12 percent to 14 percent of their glucose. And those are the areas we most need for thinking: for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and to be able to tell the difference between good and bad.