Ever have a case of the Mondays on a Wednesday, where you wake up and you’re more tired than you were before you went to bed? As a college student I’m way more used to this than the recommended eight hours of sleep a night I should be getting. However, studies show that lack of sleep not only effects our moods and how we deal with people throughout the day, but also our functional abilities, our memory, our reaction times, our ability to concentrate, our decision making ability and even our creativeness.
When doing a job that involves extreme focus, or having to drive in heavy traffic for an extended period of time, a good nights rest is highly recommended. According to WebMD driving drowsy can be just as dangerous as driving drunk; driving while sleepy is like driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08% which is pushing the legal limit in Texas. Even though the average employee at Results drives no more than 30 miles out from of his or her home office we do have many jobs that require a lot of focus.
One of the biggest risks in sleepiness is slower reaction time. Reaction time is a brief time lag between the moment when a stimulus is presented and the initiation of a response. Along with having a slow reaction time due to tiredness a person’s reaction time is also affected when the number of choices they are given increases. Having a slower reaction can end in injury or even death for individuals or others in the same environment. Studies show that after being awake for more than 16 hours your reaction time begins to slow significantly. Along with a slowing reaction time an individual’s ability to perform well begins to decrease.
Many of our skilled labor division jobs such as welding, electrical work, heavy equipment operators, and carpenters are all jobs that require having a good reaction time and are heavy on alertness. These jobs along with many others in our company necessitate each individual getting their allotted hours of sleep at night to better benefit our company, employees, and customers. Get some sleep!