Thus may seem an odd thing to put in a paper on file management but the writer has seen many sleep deprived professionals make mistakes. Doctors say that the average person needs 8 hours sleep. Here is an extract from the Wall Street Journal in September 2014:
The typical picture of a corporate highflier is someone who survives on very little sleep. He or she rises when it is still dark, works late and is still answering emails at two o’clock in the morning.
Such people do exist, of course. The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for example, was famous for operating on a few hours’ sleep. Some entrepreneurs and Wall Street traders seem to follow suit.
But if you think you need to do the same thing to get ahead, think again. A growing body of research is finding that, on the contrary, those who get a good night’s sleep are usually more productive at work. They think more clearly, quickly and creatively than those trying to get by on a few hours’ rest and a gallon of caffeine.
That’s because sleep doesn’t just rest the brain, say medical specialists. It allows the brain to perform vital maintenance and restoration tasks. Brains that get too little sleep simply cannot perform as well as those that are rested.
“There’s no doubt that sleep deprivation affects job performance,” says the Detroit Medical Center’s Safwan Badr, a former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “The evidence is compelling that when you do not get enough sleep…you are not as productive.”
Charles Czeisler, a sleep specialist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, agrees. “Missing a night’s sleep degrades our neurobehavioral performance”—that is, our mental acuity—”by the equivalent to being legally drunk,” he says. And, he warns, this doesn’t only apply if you miss one night’s sleep completely; you’ll see similar effects if you simply sleep too little each night over time.
Adults need eight hours of sleep on average, experts say. There is some variation between individuals, but it is far less than many think. Many of those who think they can be just as productive with a lot less are fooling themselves, he says. In round numbers, the percentage of adults who can really get by on five hours or less per night “is about zero,” says Dr. Czeisler.
It’s easy to be fooled. Research suggests that tired professionals are still able to go through the motions of their jobs—such as sitting in meetings, understanding reports, and performing the kinds of routine professional tasks they usually undertake.
Tired doctors make more mistakes (Ulmer et al., 2009). Tired students perform worse on tests (Taras and Potts-Datema, 2005).