Your brain doesn’t know it’s tired.  People who are sleep-deprived often don’t realize how impaired they are. Research has repeatedly shown that after even modest sleep loss, performance, judgment, attention and reaction time decline while people continue to believe they’re functioning normally.

One major study found participants restricted to 6 hours of sleep a night for two weeks performed cognitively about as poorly as those who had gone 48 hours without sleep, yet they consistently underestimated how impaired they had become. Fatigue quietly erodes judgment, creativity, memory and emotional control while convincing you you’re doing fine. That’s why exhausted leaders, executives, physicians and pilots can make confident decisions that are objectively worse.

Don’t trust how alert you are. If you’ve been sleeping six hours or less for several nights assume your judgment, attention and reaction time are worse than they feel. The recommended number of sleep hours per day is 7 and better yet, on a consistent sleep schedule.

Don’t let a tired brain evaluate itself.  Harvard Medical School’s Sleep Medicine Division says “Just one sleepless night can impair performance as much as a blood-alcohol level 0.10 percent.”

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”  — W. C. Fields

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