Why do Sleep Researchers study things that seem so blindingly obvious?
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Sleep research isn’t just having a snooze in a corner. Appealing as that may sound!
In my view, sleep research, like many research topics, sometimes struggles to answer the question WHY?
Why are you studying things that WE ALL KNOW the answer to?!
Some sleep research seems so futile and begs the question why?
The simple answer is that if we can prove what we already know, we can go some way to measuring the impact. We can then EVIDENCE it.
For example, we can quantify the impact of poor or inadequate sleep in financial terms, that people and business understand.
We can then use this knowledge to (amongst other things):
Drive behaviour change
Prove definitively that sleep loss has a detrimental impact on critical thinking
Show the productivity and sleep equation
Which means we can then say unarguably that:
Sleep loss costs money
For example, we could say more than (yawn):
It is counter-productive to stay up late (and finish that business proposal)
Even though your boss may not (currently) accept
“I needed to sleep”
as an excuse for not completing something on time…
We can (in time) learn to VALUE sleep as the ultimate performance enhancer, as we finally establish the equation:
(X hours of sleep lost per night) = ($x)
What do you think? Let me know with a quick comment below.
I read every one.
Reference
The article in question, “Poor sleep linked to inability to focus – new study” was featured in The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/amp/poor-sleep-linked-to-inability-to-focus-new-study-160399 [accessed 13th May 2021]
