We make it warm, stimulating and welcoming put a television in the room to watch to relax, an iPad to keep in touch with friends via Facebook. Many of us feel our bedroom can be a sanctuary from our 24/7 world. In contrast, later starts improve output, efficiency and quality of life. They will have a price to pay: increased risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, greater stimulant/sedative/alcohol use, exhaustion, irritability, anxiety, depressed mood, frustration and anger. Continue to start work early and most people will still lose far too much sleep. “Early to bed, early to rise makes you healthy, wealthy and wise” The research found that shorter shifts and more informed placement of recovery days got much better results. Of consultants who regularly worked 24-hour shifts, 74% showed signs of burnout or depression. Interns towards the ends of their shifts made 36% more serious errors. Harvard Medical School checked the performance of their doctors on 24-hour shifts. Two doctors are available, one near the end of her 24-hour shift, another just arriving.

Imagine: 10am and your partner is rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. We know instinctively that working long, tiring shifts impacts on performance. And poor sleep causes millions of road accidents. Jetlag is known to lead to bad decisions. Lack of sleep can be dangerous in other ways: it is a central contributor to CEO burnout. Too little sleep, and this waste remains. Natural sleep has restorative functions – in sleep it detoxes the neurotoxic waste that accumulates when you’re awake. The former UK prime minister Harold Wilson and US president Ronald Reagan probably had the condition in office. Margaret Thatcher developed Alzheimer’s – probably after leaving office. Yet too little sleep can destroy successful leaders. Politicians and leaders of industry brag about their need for only a few hours of sleep. Early starts leave almost everyone reaching for coffee to wake up and alcohol to go to sleep. Highly productive, creative workers sleep well and arrive later. And they’re welcome to catch – and eat – worms. Too many people believe starting early is the sign of a good employee: up at 5am, gym at 5.30, work at 7.īut these early-rising “larks” are extremely rare (and smug). But if you are looking for sleep myths to debunk, here are six that have come out of our research review at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences this year.

A late bird might get a worm too