What Could Your University Do to Encourage Better Sleep?

What single behavioral change could make a difference in the productivity, health, and happiness of large numbers of people at your university? Getting more sleep.

In Change the World and Get to Bed by 10:00, a recent blog post at Harvard Business Review, Julia Kirby calls on business leaders to get involved in making better sleep a public health issue. She suggests that companies could begin work policies, wellness education, and most importantly, cultural changes to help their employees improve their sleep.

Kirby points out that:

. . . the work environments cultivated by many companies are the cause of many people’s inadequate sleep. Whether it’s a hypercompetitive culture encouraging ambitious employees to burn the midnight oil, or the anxiety of working for a bad boss causing insomnia, or a level of pressure that leaves decision-makers lying awake at night, companies contribute to people’s sleep deficits.

Arianna Huffington’s TED talk How to Succeed? Get more sleep, like her column at The Telegraph, relates the story of her own exhaustion-related accident which encouraged her to change her own sleep habits and begin helping others to do the same.

Huffington asks:

Why do so many of us fail to make use of such a simple way to improve our lives? Indeed, why do we deliberately do just the opposite and make a fetish of not getting enough sleep, in the mistaken, and costly, belief that success results from the amount of time we put into work, instead of the kind of time we put into work – and the direct correlation between quality of time and time out?

She points to a culture of “sleep deprivation one-upmanship” that encourages this kind of flawed thinking.

Does academe similarly foster a culture of sleep deprivation? Certainly, pulling an all-nighter is a time-honored tradition among students studying for exams and writing papers. Such habits learned early often persist for graduate students and faculty. The professional demands of research, teaching, and service often seem to exceed the possible hours in the workday, leading many faculty to extend work into all hours of the day and night. Commuting students struggle to balance the demands of work, family, and school, whereas the sleep habits of students in residential college settings are often affected by social activities and communal living.

How might academe function differently if we all got more sleep and encouraged others to do the same? Let us know in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed photo by flickr user fltmech98]