Sleep Deficit is a Performance Killer

Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer.
By: Fryer, Bronwyn,
Harvard Business Review,
October, 2006, Vol. 84, Issue 10


DIFFERENT VOICE
A Conversation with Harvard Medical School Professor Charles A. Czeisler

Sleep is a stranger to many managers. Research by leading scientists shows just how dangerous that problem is.

Businesses need an educated workforce; ironically, school is interfering. The current high school schedule in the U.S., which typically begins around 7:20 AM, threatens the neurological development and health of adolescents, whose homeostatic drive operates differently from adults’. Most teens experience a delayed sleep phase, in which melatonin is released around 11 PM-–an hour later than in most adults. Students who finally go to sleep by midnight and wake at 6 experience a chronic sleep deficit, which disrupts their ability to learn and puts them and you at risk on the roads. In the U.S., researchers and sleep advocates are now working closely with school districts, communities, and educators to change school start times so that students can get more sleep.