1. You make mistakes.
- In a 2007 survey by the Better Sleep Council, almost one-third of respondents said that sleep deprivation reduced the quality and accuracy of their work, their ability to think and judge clearly, and their memory of important details.
2. You’re a misery to be around.
- In that same survey, 44 percent of respondents said that with too little sleep, they were likely to be in an unpleasant or unfriendly mood.
3. You’re visually impaired.
- Neuroscience researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore found that a sleep-deprived brain can process simple visuals, like flashing checkerboards. But the “higher visual areas” that make more general sense of what we see couldn’t do their job.
4. You make lousy decisions.
- Sleep loss has a major effect on judgment and decision-making processes, particularly ones that require both emotional and mental ability, according to a 2007 study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
5. You’re as good as drunk.
- The legal blood alcohol content (BAC) in California is .08. After being awake for 12 hours, you function as if you had a BAC of .032, according to Dr. Downey. After 18 hours, you function at a .07 level. And after 24 hours, you’re at 0.1 — the same as a drunk driver.
6. You’re worse than drunk.
- Research done in Scandinavia showed that after staying awake for 17 to 19 hours you function worse than if you’d reached the legal blood alcohol content limit there. Reaction times were up to 50 percent slower and accuracy was significantly poorer.
7. You’re clueless.
- People who think they do just fine on six or fewer hours of sleep show cognitive deficits but are too sleep deprived to know it, according to a 2003 study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Researchers found that chronically sleep-deprived subjects reported feeling “only slightly sleepy” even when they performed at their worst during standard psychological testing.
8. You get sick.
- People who sleep fewer than seven hours a night are roughly three times as likely to develop respiratory illness after being around someone with a cold, compared to people who sleep eight hours or more, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
9. You’re an accident waiting to happen.
- In a 2007 study of hospital nurses by Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich., subjects who worked long hours or worked at night were more likely to have an episode of drowsy driving. The risk for having a car crash, or near crash, almost doubled when they drove after working more than 12 and a half hours straight.
10. You cost your company, and the economy.
- Studies estimate that sleep deprivation currently costs U.S. businesses close to $150 billion a year in absenteeism and lost productivity, according to the Better Sleep Center. And that’s some productivity that could be pretty useful right about now.
For more career tips, check out the MoneyWatch After Hours blog
