5/15/2023 0 Comments Dont sleep until you succeed![]() ![]() In other words, our brains are actually working while we sleep. But the insight rate more than doubled among the subjects who had spent the eight hours sleeping: sixty per cent of them could now see the shortcut. Just under a quarter of the group that took a sleepless break came up with the faster solution. Each participant was retested on the task eight hours later some were allowed to sleep and others had to remain awake. Few of the subjects spontaneously figured out the solution the first time. Though the subjects didn’t know it, there was a simpler way of solving the problem-an abstract rule that would enable a quick solution. Researchers assigned a complex math task to a small group of people. So here's a question: Even if you think you're doing ok even on inadequate amounts of sleep, does that mean you couldn't be performing with greater speed and accuracy if you were sleeping enough? You Actually Figure Stuff Out While You SleepĪ 2015 New Yorker article, Maria Konnikova's "The Work We Do While We Sleep" , cited a bizarre study that found that our brains “think” when we sleep. They also committed 20 percent more errors than their well-rested counterparts. If you're like I was for the first five years of my career, you might be reading this and thinking something like, "Well, I don't get enough sleep, and I'm still performing well." Consider this: According to a physician study cited in Stevenson's book, sleep-deprived individuals took 14 percent longer to complete an assigned task. ![]() According to Shawn Stevenson's Sleep Smarter, deeper levels of sleep are "significantly disrupted" by alcohol being in your system," and this makes it so that your body can't "fully rejuvenate." Getting Enough Sleep Increases Speed and Reduces Errors ![]() Apparently you fall asleep quicker with alcohol, but your sleep isn't as deep as it could be otherwise. I used to think a glass of wine right before bed wasn't a bad idea but, as it turns out, it is. Sleep can be thrown off by all kinds of close-to-bedtime substance consumption, including some you might expect - like caffeine and nicotine - and some that may surprise you, like alcohol. This becomes our hard and fast bedtime, and paper-grading (which is best done in sprints versus marathons) gets scheduled either before that time or seven hours after it. To improve at this, we can look at what time we would have to go to bed if we were going to aim at getting seven hours of sleep per night. Regular sleep schedules even predict better moods. It's better then to go to bed at the same time each night rather than going to bed early tonight to "catch up" from a last night's paper-grading marathon. In fact, one study suggests that sleep variability (i.e., going to bed at inconsistent times) is one of the most important factors in how well people sleep. Regular exercise helps us sleep better, as does a regular meal time and a regular bed time. The key to higher-quality, REM-filled sleep is a consistent schedule. ![]() Here are a few important things I discovered about sleep - and a couple of suggestions on getting more of it. I was in this camp myself, until recently when I began doing a bit of research into the importance of sleep to a long, successful, and fulfilling teaching career. Too often, in an effort to "get it all done," teachers stay up late and wake up early, operating on increasingly worsening sleep deficits and calling it a strong work ethic. This, it turns out, is something teachers tend to be bad at - especially early career educators. What we can do is pay attention to our own sleep lives. Unfortunately, individual educators can't do much to make sure their students sleep enough at night, although districts across the country have been devising new policies – including later start times, even nap clubs – to bring schools more in sync with teen sleep patterns. Sub-optimal sleep for teenagers has been linked to academic inhibitors (e.g., attention and retention issues), mental health problems (e.g., increased risk of depression), and physical challenges (e.g., teens with less sleep are more likely to be overweight.) Sleep is extremely important to the well-being of teenagers – but they’re not getting enough. According to a 2016 study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 69 percent of high school students are getting less than eight hours of sleep on an average school night. ![]()
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