The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Productivity (Including Unexpected Ones)

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The hustle and bustle culture in which we live expects us to remain as productive as we can for as long as possible. To some of us, that may make the whole concept of sleep seem like a counterproductive waste of time. After all, the average person spends as much as a third of their time asleep. That equates to almost 3 decades during a lifetime. In fact, there is little more essential to life than sleep. After all, getting no sleep is, eventually, fatal.

Elsewhere on this blog, we’ve explored how taking a power nap can help boost your productivity. It’s been a while since we touched on this topic. We thought it was time we delved a little deeper into the relationship between sleep and productivity.  

You may know that poor-quality sleep can slow down your reaction time and make it harder to focus, but did you know that getting sufficient, good-quality sleep can increase and enhance your ability to think flexibly, be creative and make changes to plans as situations develop. This is but one of the reasons a lack of sleep can impair creativity and make us less productive.

In the rest of this article, we explore the effects of sleep deprivation on productivity,  including how it can trigger the body’s fight, flight, or freeze response. First, though, we’ll look at how not getting enough sleep can impair memory, make it difficult to focus, and worsen mood.

Let’s jump in.

The Consequences of Not Getting Enough Sleep

Not getting enough sleep can have a dramatic impact on our productivity and work performance. Let’s take a closer look at some of those consequences right now.

Difficulty Concentrating

The symptoms displayed by those with attention deficit disorders like ADHD are almost exactly mirrored by those suffering from sleep deprivation, according to Alaska Sleep Clinic. Lack of sleep impairs selective attention, meaning that we are less able to focus on a task without being derailed by distractions in the world around us. This, in turn, is likely to hamper productivity.

A Worse Memory

Our brains process information when we sleep, discard unimportant stuff, and transfer things we need to remember to our long-term memory. If we don’t sleep for long enough, this process is not completed optimally, and we may struggle to retain any information we’re trying to learn or to recall information when we need it. This can make the whole process of learning less productive and lower the quality of our performance.

Negatively Affects the Mood

Unsurprisingly, being unable to focus, struggling to recall things, and feeling tired and hungry can have an adverse effect on the mood, and cause irritability and frustration. In a workplace setting, this can have a detrimental effect on your relationships with teammates, superiors, and even members of the public.  

Poor Decision-Making

The accuracy rate of our split-second decisions decreases by up to 4% when we don’t get enough rest. This might not seem a big difference on the face of it, but it equates to making 1 bad decision in every 25. Check out our post on why we make poor decisions for more.

Reduces Creativity

As alluded to in the introduction, your creativity can also suffer when you don’t get enough sleep, because your brain can’t synthesise new ideas as easily as when your brain is fully refreshed. If we struggle more to come up with creative solutions to problems when tired, it may mean we are less productive.

More Error Prone

Sleep-deprived people have a 50% slower reaction time and reduced accuracy rate than those who’re well-rested, according to the NSF. The accuracy rate is akin to someone who has consumed alcohol and can impact work performance in a similar way.

Now, before we share some tips on how to get the best night’s sleep possible, we’ll look at some more unexpected effects of sleep deprivation, including how it can put your body in the fight, flight, or freeze mode.  

Surprising Effects Sleep Deprivation Has on the Brain

Not all the effects of a lack of sleep are as obvious as the factors listed above. Here are a few worth mentioning.

You May be Mildly Sleep-Deprived and Not Realise It

Unless you get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, you’re probably sleep deprived. The problem is that if you get around 6 hours a night, you may feel well-rested. However, your work performance can still suffer. Those who have 6 hours of sleep consistently perform worse on cognitive tests than those who get 7-9 hours. What is more, people who get just one hour less than the recommended amount tend to overestimate their performance.  The moral of this is not to let feeling well-rested fool you into believing you aren’t sleep deprived. It could have serious implications for your work performance and productivity.

Different Stages of Your Circadian Rhythm are Suited to Different Activities

Recent research suggests that short-term memory is at its most efficient in the morning, whilst working memory improves as the day progresses and is at its peak at around midday. If your sleep cycle is out of whack, it can mess with your productivity, meaning you’re not as productive as you could be at the most useful times of the day.   

It May Lead to a Reduction in Mental Clarity

The brain shrinks when we sleep, making room to flush out toxins that accumulate when we’re awake. If we go without sleep these toxins build up and can cause health issues, including less clarity of thought, or even death in the most extreme cases.

It Can Trigger Your Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

Sleep deprivation is stressful so can simulate the psychological effects of situations in which we need to protect ourselves. It can even simulate the effects of combat and is actually used by some armed forces to test recruits’ battle readiness.

If You’re Sleep Deprived, Your Body Clock May be Out of Sync   

If you continually deprive yourself of sleep, your body clock gets more and more out of sync. If you want to set yourself up for maximum productivity you should get some sunlight early in the morning, if you struggle to fall asleep. This will start to recalibrate your body clock so you have more energy during the day. You can expose yourself to sunlight later in the day if you find your energy levels dipping too early in the day.  

Before we wrap things up, we’ll share some tips for how to get better quality sleep.

Tips for Getting Good Quality Sleep

There is no denying that some problems you might have with sleep might be rooted in deeper issues like anxiety and depression and may require professional help to solve. However, for more common sleep issues. There are several things you can do to get a better night’s sleep and set yourself up for greater productivity the following day.

You can:

• Keep your bedroom cool, and comfortable (around 18°C) because temperature can impact sleep.
• Wear cotton pajamas to bed, because cotton lets your skin breathe. Don’t wear anything that makes you itchy or sweaty or causes any other sort of discomfort.
• Use white noise to help block out disturbances when you’re attempting to fall asleep.  This can be any noise that remains the same for a long time, such as the whirling of a fan.
• Put away all your device half an hour before you turn in to avoid exposure to blue light, which keeps your brain awake and alert.
• Have a solid night-time routine that you stick to each evening. For more on this, read our post on how to build a productive night-time routine.

Wrapping Up

There you have it. We’ve explored some of the many effects of sleep deprivation on productivity, from things you probably knew about to things that were (perhaps) unexpected. Hopefully, you find our tips for getting better quality sleep useful and that they start you off on the right foot.

As tricky as it is to prioritise sleep, ensuring you get enough good quality sleep every night is crucial if you want to be at your healthiest and most productive.