You're Starting Work Too Early in the Morning

Yup, 24-7. Always on. Getting by on 4 or 5 hours a night and killin' it, right?

Well, not exactly. In your dreams, we might say, if you were sleeping deeply and long enough to have dreams.

Many people, especially Americans are not getting enough sleep. Technology and globalization are partly to blame, but so is the fear that if you're not on call and ready to rumble, management will find someone else who will be. For half the price.

Part of the problem, as the following article explains, is that getting up too early interrupts our Circadian rhythms, which is a fancy way of saying our body clocks are genetically set to crash earlier and ring later. Those 5:45 AM workouts with your trainer and 7AM all-hands conference calls may look good on the screen, but they could be negatively affecting performance.

The reality is not that we should all slow down and smell the roses (before the coffee), but that intelligent time management is as much of a strategic weapon as is every other resource utilization initiative. JL

Jill Krasny reports in Inc.:

After analyzing 124,517 adults' sleep and work habits, the American Time Use Surveys from 2003 to 2011determined you need to start your day later, or at least make the start time more flexible.
You already know you should be getting seven to nine hours of shut-eye a night. But are you? Probably not. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 percent of employed U.S. adults clock less than that and the results aren't pretty. Not only does lack of sleep hamper longterm productivity, it can ravage your skin and your sex drive.
Fortunately, Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine may have a solution. After analyzing 124,517 American adults' sleep and work habits, as recorded in the American Time Use Surveys from 2003 to 2011, he and his colleagues determined all you need is to start your day later, or at least make the start time more flexible. The research was published online in the journal SLEEP.
"Results show that with every hour that work or educational training started later in the morning, sleep time increased by 20 minutes," explains the research release. "Respondents slept an average of only six hours when starting work before or at 6 a.m. and 7.29 hours when starting work between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m." Self-employed respondents fared even better, obtaining "significantly more sleep than private sector employees" and becoming 17 percent less likely "to be a short sleeper."
Clearly, flexible schedules could make people feel better at work, though not everyone's convinced of their merit. Allowing team members some wiggle room when it comes to when (and where) they work has been proven to help attract and retain top talent. But it doesn't mean much if senior leadership isn't involved in the effort, according to research firm Mercer.
A study published in Academy of Management Journal offers a reason: "managers often interpret a person's use of flex work options as a signal of high or low job commitment," writes Time's Nanette Fondas. Specifically, "if a boss attributes an employee's need for flex to personal-life reasons like child care, as opposed to job performance enhancement reasons like acquiring new skills, the boss tends to assess the employee as less committed and less deserving of career rewards such as raises and promotions."
Still, who can argue with better performance at work? A pro-sleep culture is healthy for everyone.