Do you perform poorly at work? That might actually start in bed.

Are you already distracted when the office door opens, do you forget that one meeting every now and then, and do you regularly take a trip to the snack machine for some extra sugars? The cause might just lie between the sheets. Poor sleep directly affects your performance at work.

After my thirtieth, the trouble began, so consider yourself warned if you're approaching that age. If I got two hours less than my ideal seven and a half hours per night, I was worth nothing the next day. I felt like I had drunk a bottle of wine by myself and that without sleep. Not really a good start to your day. And that while I often hadn't done anything, but just spent an hour too long binge-watching Netflix. By now, I even get a bit stressed if I can't sleep because I know I perform better after a good night's rest.

Experts confirm my hungover feeling and my lack of focus. For every hour of sleep deprivation, you eat about 140 more calories per day. You have less control over that impulse. And I typically suffer from insatiable hunger when I've had a good amount of wine. But that's not all, because sleep deprivation causes even more trouble at work. Research shows that you can handle less, which means you immediately jump on that annoying colleague when a wrong word is spoken. You forget appointments and deadlines faster, and it all works out to be a bit less relaxed. Even your ability to communicate declines when you sleep poorly. Just try having a sensible conversation after a night of being on call.

Half of the population has trouble falling asleep a few times a week, writes psychologist and stress expert Thijs Launspach. A full one in three people suffers from chronic sleep deprivation. It's fine if you're dozing off behind your laptop, of course, but this also concerns the surgeon who has an open-heart surgery scheduled for today. Not such a relaxing thought.

How do you solve that sleep deprivation? Neuroscientist and sleep expert Els van der Helm gives quite easy tips to the AD. Less email outside office hours, no meetings scheduled in the evening, and plan that travel a bit later in the day. Also, go ahead and hang those blackout curtains in your bedroom, throw that phone out of bed, and just go to bed on time for once. It's time we start listening to that body instead of pretending to be tough by sleeping as little as possible.

So, I wish you a good night now.

Source; AD.nl