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Study Shows All the Things that Could Go Right at Work if You Got Just One Extra Hour of Sleep

Study Shows All the Things that Could Go Right at Work if You Got Just One Extra Hour of Sleep

If only your child could alter her schedule to accommodate.

Even though many studies have proven that getting good quality sleep is essential for functioning our best, our kids haven't gotten the memo. And even if they had, they likely wouldn't care. So the end result is turning into a mombie and hoping for the best at work the next day. But it turns out, just one extra hour of sleep can do a lot for you.

As reported by Quartz, a new study has found that getting an additional 60 minutes of rest at night can up your wages and productivity, among other work benefits. The study is published by the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance.

To conduct the study, health economist Joan Costa-Font and labor economist Sarah Fleche, who are husband and wife, worked with data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which examined 14,000 families from a child’s birth to age 25. The study gave the researchers access to records of both parental and child sleep, as well as employment information of the parents, whether the parent is an extrovert or introvert and sleeping arrangement data. They controlled for as many factors as possible, including parenting style, having a new partner, having a new child and childcare arrangements, as well as the kind of room the child sleeps in, parents' income and the household composition.

The research revealed that moms who get an additional hour of rest experience an increase in employment (likelihood of having a job) by 4 percentage points, an increase in number of hours worked by 7 percent (if you're paid hourly, that can be a very good thing; if you've got a lot to do on a salaried position, that can also be a good thing), an increase in household income by 10 to 11 percent and an increase in job satisfaction by 0.01 points. All that from just one extra hour of sleep? Sounds like a great deal to us!

The research also quantified just how damaging having your sleep interrupted by your kid can be. Waking up just once with a child per night can reduce a mom's average sleep duration by 30 minutes, partially thanks to how long it takes to get back to sleep after being awakened by your cranky customer's crying. As Quartz reports, dads are affected, too, by sleep interruptions caused by their children, but moms are affected twice as much. (As the primary caregivers to our kids, we're not surprised moms are affected more!)

Despite all the research that emphasizes the importance of getting good quality sleep, this study definitely stands out to us because it doesn't just say, "Hey, sleep is good for you because x, y, z." It shows us—in numbers—what we stand to gain if we can get a tiny bit more sleep. Because when you're short on time, you just need the facts, and these are hard to ignore.

Written by Maricar Santos for Working Mother and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.

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