Sleep more, work less

It is hard to invent the Mars spaceship or create a good marketing plan for selling swimsuits in Saudi Arabia, after a party and on just two hours of sleep. On the other hand, many companies start the work day too early, at 8am or 9am, destroying their employees natural “body clocks”.

Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at the University in Munich, who studies the phenomenon of sleep, said that “sleep is a strategic resource that most companies are ignoring”. Especially, because we are all different. Some people prefer to start a work at 1pm and do most of the duties in the evening. Than eat a dinner at 10pm and sunbathe (in solarium) on midnight . Why not ? In the same time “the early birds” drink their third coffee while the sun is just rising.

Everyone has their own bodyclock but these two examples above are radical. “It’s like feet,” said Roenneberg. “Some people are born with big feet and some with small feet, but most people are somewhere in the middle.” So, more or less, maybe less, it is similar to choosing a partner. Some men prefer blondes, some brunettes, but we all end up with gingers who want to clean dishes after us.

The pressure to be productive and available, even during Christmas, means that many people suffer from something called “the social jetlag”. In normal words, our bodies are always in the wrong time zone. Work and rest periods are not separated, mixed like your vodka-whiskey drink at the party. Roenneberg estimates that more than 70% of people get up earlier than they should if the goal is to be rested and perform best.

We know from researches, that the best time to start a work is 10am. Not for everybody but for most of us. When people are younger, they should sleep more and wake up later. Just to regain energy for other work, study, party day when their organisms would be also growing, maturating. So if you really want to watch the Olympics on a different continent which events start at 4am, just get older faster.