Go to Sleep / Roughly thirty percent of working Americans survive on less than six hours of unconscious rest a day

The two largest time commitments for most adults on this planet — sleep and work — too often make uneasy bedfellows. The proliferation of nonstandard work schedules and, for many, the outright abandonment of schedules have made traditional daytime-weekday patterns less common. Approximately one in five American workers now functions under some variety of nonstandard schedule. Meanwhile, about half of the nation’s night-shift workers sleep six hours or less per day. The demands of other unconventional arrangements, such as multiple job-holding and independent contracting, have also contributed to the sleep deprivation that plagues much of the workforce.

Add it all up and roughly thirty percent of working Americans survive on less than six hours of unconscious rest a day. They exist on the groggy side of a sleep divide, at an uncomfortable and unhealthful distance from the relatively well-rested majority of employees. Lost sleep impairs decision-making capability, undercuts productivity, and contributes to expensive adverse health effects, including elevated risks of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal conditions.

Unfortunately, a deeply embedded American cultural tradition dismisses sleep as a waste of time. At least since General Electric founder Thomas Edison declared sleep “an absurdity, a bad habit” a century ago, many successful business leaders have promoted a virtual cult of overextended wakefulness, often amplified by considerable media attention to their behavior and commentary. From the Wall Street dynamos monitoring and mastering global financial markets at all hours of the day and night to the NFL coaches living all season in their offices, a sizable contingent of self-disciplined professionals in positions of authority continue to perpetuate unhealthful patterns by pushing themselves and others under their control to turn work into a restless marathon.

The primary message — sometimes implicit, often boastfully announced — is that extended sleeplessness represents a form of masculine strength, leaving those taking a moderate amount of rest as effeminate weaklings destined to lose out in fierce marketplace competition. As one corporate executive put it not long ago, “Sleep is for sissies.” Senior partners in high-powered law firms ask striving young associates preparing for a big case whether they would rather sleep or win.

This dangerous attitude has come under mounting criticism.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Real Men Go to Sleep – Alan Derickson – Harvard Business Review.