How healthy sleep habits enhance your performance at work
Can your sleep habits be the ticket to winning your next negotiation? Read on for our tips.
Sleep, we just can’t seem to get enough. Have you ever eyed up the sick room at work and wondered if anyone would notice if you took a quick nap break? Or stared at the space under your desk and wondered how long it would take anyone to notice you under there?
Sleep debt often occurs due to pushing your body’s boundaries – does staying up later than you should or doing too much in one day ring a bell? It might be tempting to watch endless Tik Tok videos or constantly work late, but if you care about your performance on the job then you should care about your sleep hygiene.
Slumber secrets that will have you winning
There are numerous studies that show how good sleep is an integral factor to achieving peak performance. Moreover, these studies contain proven strategies to help you ensure you catch the most zzzz’s.
Our top slumber secrets are:
- Look after your body to the best of your ability.
- Have a wind down period at the end of the day, including no screen time for at least 30 minutes.
- Keep regular sleep patterns like setting certain sleep and wake up times.
- Incorporate journalling, meditation, reading, yoga, gentle exercise or a cup of tea into your daily routines. These activities are very effective at calming the body and mind.
The reality of sleep debt and how it impacts your performance
When it comes to self care, good sleeping habits should be among your top priorities. A report from the National Library of Medicine in Maryland (US) showed that even when its participants thought they were absolutely smashing their performance, this wasn’t the case. The study indicated that consistent restriction of sleep (six hours or less per night) produces up to two nights of total sleep deprivation across fourteen days. It also showed that moderate sleep restriction “can impair waking neurobehavioral functions in healthy adults”.
The participants were reporting that there was no effect on them when the evidence suggested otherwise … so, how are sleep deficiencies likely to present?
- Decreased ability in quality judgements
- Decreased quality of work in general
- Increase in mistakes, oversights and errors
- More likely to take unnecessary risks
- Harder to detach emotionally, likely to just do the first option that comes to mind
- Cognitive overload (those brain fog moments or mind blank moments)
A procurement pro needs sleep!
Procurement professionals often feel like they need to be sharper than the average tack. Being sharp and focused is required for many of the various directions we find ourselves pulled in.
The average procurement pro is running the gauntlet every day:
- Ducking and diving through competing priorities and conflicting deadlines
- Stretched across multiple accounts and categories
- Numerous technical fields, jargon and industry terms for the many subject areas
- High pace, high stress and high risk environments
COVID-19 has changed the way we approach our work environment, many of us work from home and conduct far more business outside of an office environment than we ever dreamed. If exercise gear is now accepted as work wear, then can we re-think approaches to sleep?
How to reframe your sleep habits
- Analyse any areas where there are any unhealthy habits. For example if you’re a night owl and work late can you take a power nap, rest, work-break or meditate during the day?
- Reframe naps as micro breaks. Science doesn’t lie about what qualifies as sleep, there is only one definition! But if you are struggling to get more sleep into your night, then try and take some of the stress and intensity out of your daytime activities.
- Quality is key. Understanding how you sleep can be beneficial and there are numerous gadgets out there now that you can wear overnight that will help give you insight into the quality of your sleep. It’s not always about how long you sleep, but the quality of your sleep.
- Data. By tracking your sleep and comparing it to things like activity during the day, amount of exercise, food eaten and caffeine consumption then you may be able to start targeting strategies to implement, giving yourself the best head start when your head hits the pillow.
Remember, performance on the job is important to your career aspirations and quality of output. And let’s not forget, if 2020 taught us anything, it was how a crisis can shake things up in our career trajectories. So, to put your best foot forward and to ensure you’re keeping your career on track, get your sleep hygiene on point.
