Think about the last night you slept poorly. How productive were you the next day at work? Struggling to get started? Did the day drag on? Do you procrastinate on Twitter or TikTok instead of doing your work? If your answer to these questions is yes, then you are not alone. Even though we don’t fully understand why we sleep, we do know that sleep is vital to our physical and mental functioning. So how does one bad night’s sleep affect our performance at work the next day, and how can we counteract any negative effects?
Research in organizational behavior has identified sleep to be effective at work. For example, my colleagues and I have conducted diary studies in which employees complete surveys several times a day over several work weeks.
Findings demonstrate that employees on good days (i.e., higher sleep quality or duration) perform better on their core work tasks, are more engaged at work, and are more likely to support coworkers, compared to poor sleep. Is.
Meanwhile, lack of sleep makes employees more likely to procrastinate and engage in unethical behavior, such as claiming credit for someone else’s work.
One study found that in the days following managers’ poor-quality sleep, their employees reported more occasions of abusive supervision, such as making negative comments about them in front of other colleagues.
sleep affects willpower
Sleep is especially important for the higher-level cognitive skills we use to control and coordinate our thoughts and behavior. One important cognitive skill that particularly depends on good sleep is self-control, or willpower.
Most of what we do in the workplace requires willpower. We need willpower to control our impulses and emotions, to complete tasks that are less enjoyable or downright unpleasant, and to resist distractions while working.
Examples of situations that require willpower at work might include someone in a customer-facing role, even when they are not actually in a positive mood, or someone working remotely on a challenging task. while their children play in the background. ,
4 Tips for Functioning Well After a Bad Night’s Sleep
There is a lot of research that highlights the importance of good sleep and offers tips to improve sleep, such as avoiding using smartphones before bedtime. But from time to time, most of us will still have a bad night, especially if we’re feeling stressed. So how can we do well at work the next day?
1. Be strategic about the tasks you work on
If possible, you should avoid work tasks that require willpower when you haven’t slept well at night. Instead, work on tasks that are simple and don’t require a lot of thought or attention.
If you can’t avoid tasks that require willpower, schedule them early in the day because you’re likely to have more mental energy at that time.
2. Rethink Your Mindset
Research shows that the way people think about willpower shapes their ability to engage it.
One theory suggests that exerting willpower depletes our mental energy, making us less willing and able to exercise further willpower. But people who strongly believe that willpower depends on limited mental resources tend to feel more tired than those who believe that willpower depends on unlimited resources that can be easily retrieved.
According to my research, employees who believe that willpower depends on having unlimited resources perform better on days when they are sleep deprived. So, even though researchers are still working to understand the limits of willpower, you might try rethinking your view of how strongly exerting willpower drains your mental energy.
3. If You Can’t Change Yourself, Change Your Situation
If you’re on a diet, it’s easier not to buy chocolate at the supermarket in the first place than to avoid eating it every time you open the kitchen cupboard. Research has shown that people who are very good at using willpower tend to avoid situations that require it.
In one experiment, when given the choice of working on a task in a room with fewer distractions than one with many distractions, people who were better at using willpower were more likely to choose the room with fewer distractions. So especially on days when you have a bad night’s sleep, strategies that avoid the need to exert willpower altogether can help you be more productive and accomplish your work tasks.
4. Watch a funny video
Positive emotions can help restore our mental energy because they counteract the harmful effects of negative emotions.
In a recent study, my colleagues and I found that watching a funny video during the day can reduce the harmful mental effects of work demands that require willpower, and thus increase employee effectiveness. . So on days when you didn’t sleep well, when you feel like your mental energy is low, watching a funny video can help you distract yourself for a while.