How Sleep Can Improve Your Focus and Productivity
Sleep plays a key role in preserving health and wellbeing throughout life. It is essential to get plenty of quality sleep at the right times in order to protect your physical and mental health, quality of life, and your own safety. When we sleep, the body takes time to support healthy brain function and maintain physical health. However, most of us don’t manage to get enough sleep every day, due to various daily obligations, stress, anxiety, and other factors. But, we should all work on getting quality sleep at night since, besides keeping us healthy, sleep can actually promote improved focus and productivity.
What is Sleep Deprivation
In simple terms, sleep deprivation is not getting enough sleep. This can happen to anyone and it is quite common among workers with multiple jobs and caregivers. People who change their work and daily routines on a daily basis are more likely to experience sleep deprivation due to the lack of structure in their days and they often postpone going to bed every night.
However, the biggest result and impact of sleep deprivation is not being energized, lack of focus, and lower productivity. When you don’t have a clear sleeping schedule you can easily impair your ability to function the next day. And symptoms of sleep deprivation are much more than just feeling tired. You can get irritable, struggle to think clearly, or even form memories. Lack of sleep leads to a lack of cognitive function and we all need this in order to perform great at work. Your decision-making skills may deteriorate, and you may make more mistakes, or simply not be as productive as you’d like.
How to Improve Sleep for Productivity and Focus?
The first thing to do is establish a clear sleeping schedule and bedtime routine. This routine will help navigate your body into the ‘sleeping mode’ when you’re ready to go to bed. You can read, take hot baths or showers and give yourself an hour of downtime each night. This will lead to increased production of melatonin, which tells your body and brain that it’s time for bed.
Another thing to do is to create a calming and peaceful environment for sleeping. Make sure to be able to turn off all the lights in the bedroom and get an anatomical pillow and mattress. You can research some of the best and healthiest mattresses here and read reviews to find your next bedtime companion that will keep you sound asleep.
Sleep and Focus and Productivity
When we get enough quality sleep it helps us clear our minds and think more clearly. It also helps us remember information and make decisions more easily. On the other hand, when you don’t get enough sleep your‘ executive functions’ are impaired which leads to more negative results in school, work, and other aspects of your daily life. We all need a clear and alert brain that will allow us to focus, learn and gather information. We also need a clear brain to be creative; quality sleep is the only way to achieve that state of mind. Various research shows that we all need quality sleep to feed our brains and keep our innovative thinking and problem-solving skills intact.
Sleep and Memory
In order to stay productive and focused, you have to have a great memory and the ability to retrieve information without a problem. Research strongly suggests that sleep is critical for learning and forming long-term memories. The experts say that deep sleep probably promotes the consolidation of recent memories. What’s more, research suggests that learning new skills and procedures needs quality sleep. Sleep is beneficial for memory and all sections of the brain important for memory are active when we sleep. It is safe to say that in order to be able to work efficiently and focus better during the day, you will need to have strong memory abilities, and to gain all that you need plenty of quality sleep.
As it can be seen, sleep is the key component to improving your focus and productivity. Every adult should get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night to promote health. And when you’re rested, you have more energy for the next day and all the needed fuel to stay productive and focus on your job, family, and life.
