Cutting down on sleep drasticlly affects our capacity to learn and make decisions. Habitually going to bed late and waking up early makes us less productive and prone to make more mistakes. It has a detrimental effect on our intellectual potential.
People with sleep problems, whether self-induced or due to their environment, tend to be depressive and susceptible to high levels of stress and excitement. Sleep deprivation also contributes to health problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease.
Sleep is essential for learning. Sleep improves recall in learning and retention of facts we learned the previous day. The Independent of London, for example, comments that a good night’s sleep “is a prerequisite to effective recall in subsequent weeks.” Sleep is also crucial in learning new motor skills. Studies in Germany and the United States have shown that while sleep is important for storing memories in the brain, this must occur “within a critical time frame,” states the journal Proceedings of the National Accademy of Sciences. People who were taught a new skill and then tested after a full night’s rest did much better than those who were tested within 12 hours before going to bed. “Thus,” in the words of researcher Dr. Ullrich Wagner, “sleep acts as a creative learning process.”