National Sleep Awareness Week

Don’t get us started on sleep. The National Sleep Foundation just released their annual Sleep in America poll (for a summary check out this AP wire story) and once again it shows that people are tired, tired, tired. According to the story, “[r]oughly one-third of those surveyed said they had fallen asleep or become very sleepy at work in the past month.”

As the story also notes, people are working longer hours and so they stay up later to be with their families. But they also have to get up (on average) at 5:35 a.m., presumably so they can get to work “on time” . . . and finish sleeping.

It seems crazy to even have to say this, but if you’re an adult who is getting your job done, then you should be able to eat and sleep when you need to eat and sleep. In a Results-Only Work Environment, you get to choose when you sleep. As long as the work is getting done, then no one judges how you spend your time.

But setting aside ROWE for a moment, we’d like to explore another aspect of this story. The survey found that people needed another 40 minutes of sleep at night. What would happen if everyone got their missing 40 minutes a day and worked 40 minutes less each day? Do you think business would suffer? What if they worked an hour a half less per day? What about two hours?

If you clicked on that link then you’ve read that we already spend big chunks of the workday not working. We bust ass to get to work “on time” and then we spend part of the day pretending to work. It’s a ridiculous game that everyone at some point in their life has played. Everyone knows it’s a joke.

Here’s the real question: if we’re all grown-ups, why, when it comes to work, do we act like such children? If you really think about all the wasted energy and all the white lies and self-deception, isn’t it kind of embarrassing?