Column Chronicles: Sleep a little more to get more done

Sleep a little more to get more done

Frank Cotolo
September 10, 2015

Sleep. It's the one thing that no matter how we try we cannot do while awake. Not only does sleep get in the way of time that could be spent doing things but most doctors insist people get seven to nine hours of it a day. It's uncouth and a lot of people won't take it laying down.

A study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 30 percent of employed adults in America get much less than seven to nine hours of sleep a day, fighting the body’s pleas for rest just to get more work done.

But sleep has sweet revenge, according to the study, because without enough of it, long-term productivity suffers, as does the health of your skin and the force of your sex drive (still being studied is how a lack of sleep affects your ability to properly cook Welsh rabbit and become an electrician).

A few scientists, none of which care for square-dancing, are offering solutions to the sleep problem.

Dr. Drury Duty of the Sleep Study Institute said, "If a person starts a day later, he or she would get more work done in less time."

But how does that calculate?

"I'll explain," said Dr. Duty. "If you start work at six in the morning, you decrease your sleep time because you have gone to sleep the night before too late. If you start work at seven thirty you are still asleep at six and that is an hour and a half more you can sleep. For each hour you work later you get twenty more minutes to sleep."

No one in the study group understood Dr. Duty at first but Dr. Anthony Saint explained to them that "sleeping later gives a worker what we call flex time. Other sleep institutes call it flux time but we like the work flex because it doesn't sound dirty. One slip of the tongue and you say flux wrong and zippity do dah you should like you are being rude."

Dr. Duty said, "You can sleep three hours, like from seven in the morning to ten in the morning and get more work done that day than a grasshopper in a wind tunnel."

The study used 234,546 people over six years to establish that people get up too early to work do not get as much done as those who sleep later. The study was published and handed out to the management of many companies that hired many employees but was not received well.

"We don't buy this flex stuff," said a manager of a huge factory that made many things with many parts and needed many people to put the things together. "If we start letting employees sleep until ten in the morning the whole morning will be shot. Let them learn to go to sleep earlier and get to their jobs the hell on time."

Dr. Duty disagreed and resorted to violently approaching managers of businesses that dismissed the study. When one of the men he attacked brought the doctor up on charges, the doctor moved to Geneva.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.