Rest for Success: Sleep for Energy and Focus

This post is the third in a series about some perhaps less obvious – but still vital – tools for success in graduate school. As a graduate student, you may feel like the most important part of you is your brain. But the truth is, we are whole people, not “brains on a stick” (Smith, 2016). What you do with the rest of your body, mind, and spirit is going to directly and deeply affect your academic success. In previous posts, I wrote about the importance of food for energy and focus and exercise for energy and focus. In this post, I’ll explore another essential tool for success: sleep.

We Need Sleep

I started the year with a trip to Tokyo. Everything about Tokyo is wonderful. Clean streets, delicious food, punctual trains. The only minor drawback to the city is that it is roughly 6,500 miles away from my house and in a time zone that is 14 hours ahead. I think I am pretty good at managing jet lag (exercise, lots of water, and not getting frustrated about how little sleep you are getting). By Day 3 of kicking off events at 2:30 a.m., though, I began to experience some ill effects. I felt physically tired, of course. But more than that, I felt delirious. I was nervous that in my only semi-lucid state, I would forget an appointment (or something even more basic, like my room key or my Metro pass). I told the students in my online class to please ignore me if I said anything crazy, which seemed like a very real possibility.

It turns out that my experience was typical. Randy Gardner, who for a while held the world record for longest time without sleep, shared in a 2018 episode of the Hidden Brain podcast that he could walk and play basketball without sleep – but he couldn’t think clearly. According to an article on Healthline, lack of sleep affects executive functioning, which is what I was experiencing. It also makes people irritable, distractable, and (no surprise here) less alert. More serious sleep deprivation can cause serious, long-term health effects including heart attacks and dementia.

And, it doesn’t take much sleep loss for the effects to kick in. Research has suggested that going 24 hours without sleep leaves a person in a state similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1. That, my friends, is too drunk to drive. Even more sobering (get it?) is what I heard from sleep researcher Matthew Walker (author of Why We Sleep) who I listened to on both the Hidden Brain episode featuring Gardner and Part 2 of the series on sleep. He said that when we “spring forward” and lose an hour of sleep, this correlates with a 25 percent rise in heart attacks the next day. Lest we think this is coincidence, “falling back” and getting an extra hour of sleep correlated with a 21 percent drop in heart attacks. I would recommend the podcast’s two episodes on sleep, except that, if you are like me and are only a so-so sleeper, they will make you so anxious that, well, you won’t be able to sleep.

The Benefits of Sleep

Sleep allows the body to slow down, lowering blood pressure and regulating blood sugar. It consolidates memories and makes new neural connections. Sleep is associated with creativity and innovation.

Creativity, memory, energy, and focus – all things a graduate student needs, and they all come from a good night’s sleep.

So, What Is a Good Night’s Sleep?

While seven hours is a common recommendation for the amount of sleep a person should get each night, Walker says eight is better, because sleep has so many benefits.

That’s all very well. But multiple priorities, looming deadlines, impostor syndrome, interpersonal stress, and self-imposed pressure can make sleep a challenge for graduate students, both logistically and physiologically. A 2020 article in the Journal of Occupational Therapy Education (Yang & Smallfield, 2020) reported that many graduate students in the health professional fields get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. I would venture to guess that the problem extends beyond the health professions. Interestingly, another study on graduate students and sleep (Pallos et al., 2005) found that more than 83 percent of poor sleepers did not seek help for the problem.

That may be, in part, because sleep is very difficult to control. You may be able to push yourself to exercise and discipline yourself to eat right, but you can’t force your body to go to sleep. There are, however, things that we can do to provide the conditions for sleep. In the next post, I’ll share insights from the two studies on graduate students and sleep, as well as tips from a sleep researcher and therapist who treats people with sleep disorders.

References

Pallos, H., Gergely, V., Yamada, N., Miyazaki S., and Okawa, M. (2005). Exploring the quality of sleep on long-term sojourn: International graduate students in Japan. Sleep & Biological Rhythms 3(3),142–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1479-8425.2005.00183.x

Smith, J. K. A. (2016). You Are What You Love. Brazos Press.

Yang, K., and Smallfield, S. Exploring sleep health among occupational therapy students. (2020). Journal of Occupational Therapy Education (JOTE) 4(1). https://doi.org/10.26681/jote.2020.040108

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