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How better sleep can improve productivity

Struggling to get a good night’s rest after a long day in the lab? Sleep specialists offer some advice.
  1. Nikki Forrester

    1. Nikki Forrester is a science journalist based in Davis, West Virginia.

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Sleep has a profound impact on human health, improving attention, memory, emotional regulation and work performance, and reducing the risk of disease1,2. But over the past few decades, the amount of sleep that people get has declined substantially. A 2012 study3 of some 690,000 children from 20 countries found that nightly sleep duration fell by more than an hour from 1905 to 2008. Nearly one-third of adults in the United States sleep for less than six hours per night2, and sleep duration has dropped since the 1960s for adults in Japan, Russia, Finland, Germany, Belgium and Austria4.

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Nature 619, 659-661 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02307-z

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 25 October 2023: This Career feature erroneously stated that ref. 3 was published in 2017.

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