Table of Contents
Introduction
As someone who only sleeps barely three hours each night reading about sleep has been quite fascinating, and I’ve grown to fear much of what this research found. This study found that humans can indeed handle many days of continues sleeplessness at the expense of deteriorating health and effectiveness, as well as how we function. Lack of sleep will impair our senses, our perception, it will make it difficult for us to concentrate, we will have a much slower reaction. All these things together can make a human have a poor memory, be emotionally disturbed, and can lead to far more horrible scenarios.
I quite agree with all the above, as I find my lack of sleep at work, which is five days a week from 7 am to 5 pm to hinder my performance of mundane tasks. My eyes are red and close on their own, I feel what I call my brain falling asleep, and feel dizzy and suffer headaches. So far, I’ve had no trouble at work nor when I drive, but I know I am putting myself and others at risk with something as normal as sleep.
Preparation
This article addresses how sleep deprivation can have an effect on decision making even when working as a team, for the sleep deprived will struggle with accuracy and problem-solving. The author hypothesis that even though the saying “burning the midnight oil” is considered a positive expression it is, in reality, a dangerous thing to do for the sleep deprived will struggle with simple movement as they will not be 100% focused.
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This study total number of participants was not disclosed, only that it was divided into five categories. There were two extreme cases for a team, one which was fully sleep deprived and another which was fully rested, the third team had a combination of rested and sleep deprived teammates. They defined most of the sleep-deprived team as those which had less than 50% rested members. Another team had a group with one rested member and that fifth team had one sleep deprived member.
Results
The fully sleep-deprived team was prone to more errors as was expected from the author. Thus, the author proposes that the influence of sleep deprivation on teams is determined by the task at hand, the structure of the teams and how they processed the tasks socially. The study showed that teams which were fully rested with one deprived member were held back by that one member who had much slower reactions and could not work to his full capacity. A team can have even worse results when its leader is sleep deprived, as the leader could struggle to maintain attention and thus could not lead and maintain control of the tasks. It was also discovered that well-rested teammates can work extra hard to compensate for sleep deprived members. The research suggested that team members were more willing to work with their sleep-deprived companion when their exhausting is due to work and not because they stayed awake doing a non-work-related task, like partying.
Conclusion
Sleep deprivation will disrupt our brain activity, it will make it more difficult to communicate with each other, can lead to a temporary mental gap that affects our memory and visual awareness. Short term memory will be damaged by sleep deprivation, this is the memory that helps you remember what someone just told or the one that remembers a simple phone number. Not only will short-term memory be affected long term memory too. Not sleeping enough will cause us to not be attentive, not only to what others are saying but to our own senses. This can be incredibly dangerous for a working adult, as they put their life’s at risk at work or driving in the streets.
The most dangerous of all these, sleep deprivation will damage our brain cells. Studies have found that 25% of specific brain cells have died due to prolonged lack of sleep in mice. Other studies have found lower amounts of white matter in the brain, which has been tied as a possible result of lack of sleep. In the end, being sleep deprived is not good psychologically, nor physically nor physiologically, there is no positive outcome to being sleep deprived and in the world we live in today, where we must often work more than eight hours each, and sleep less than that amount being sleep deprived can affect all of us.
