More sleep better productivity:new study

Almost 40,000 people from around the world participated in the online scientific investigation, which includes an in-depth questionnaire and a series of cognitive performance activities.

Adrian Owen, lead researcher of the study, said, "We really wanted to capture the sleeping habits of people around the entire globe. Obviously, there have been many smaller sleep studies of people in laboratories but we wanted to find out what sleep is like in the real world."

Adrian Owen says that it is better to keep track of your sleeping hours because, people who sleep for 7 to 8 hours per night performed better cognitively than those who slept less, or more than this amount.

Approximately half of all participants reported typically sleeping less than 6.3 hours per night, about an hour less than the study s recommended amount. One startling revelation was that most participants who slept four hours or less performed as if they were almost nine years older.

Another surprising discovery was that sleep affected all adults equally. The amount of sleep associated with highly functional cognitive behaviour was the same for everyone (7 to 8 hours), regardless of age. Also, the impairment associated with too little, or too much, sleep did not depend on the age of the participants.