You’re exhausted, you come home after a tiring day at work. You lay on your uncomfortable lumpy bed. You check your email, and you see that your boss assigned you to write a proposal due the following day.

So you try to work on it right away, but nothing comes to mind. You’re like Taylor Swift’s Blank Space but with just the blank space line over and over.

You’ve written proposals before, so why are you coming up with nothing now?

Try these three steps from Sleep Standards. First, relax. Second, get your overworked self a new mattress. You can’t relax if you’re uncomfortable. So take out that old lumpy mattress, cash in those sleepless work you’ve been doing, and buy yourself a new one! Third, get yourself some sleep.

1. Why You Need Sleep to Work Better

Here are some answers:

a) Uninterrupted Concentration

When you’re sleep-deprived, you become slow-paced. You get distracted easily, and you have a hard time coming back from the distraction. With enough sleep, your mind is recharged, which helps you focus on the task at hand.

So when your officemate did something annoying or distracting, you’re able to shrug it off and go back to work. As a result, you can make the most out of your work time.

b) Alertness

Another benefit is that your mind will be alert, allowing you to easily spot oversights in your work. These include misspellings, wrong sections, and formatting.

When you submit your project, you’re sure it’s flawless and worthy of your boss’s approval.

c) Clearer Mind and Fresher Ideas

Good, fresher ideas are always better than forced ones. Your mind is clear and is ready to pump out those creative juices, so you’ll be able to come up with good ideas.

As opposed to giving out ideas just for the sake of giving out ideas, that is. Plus, it may earn you some good points with your boss if they like your suggestions!

d) Problem-solving skill is at its best

When you’re sleep-deprived, the moment you come across a problem, your mind goes blank. You experience a figurative standstill.

That’s because your mind is out of energy. If it were a phone, it’s already in low power mode, and you’re making it run on high powered apps!

So the next time an intern asks you for help in damage control, you can curb it into a teaching moment for them.

e) You make better decisions.

With a clear mind, you can process all the factors and think about it before making a decision. As we all know, making the right decisions is crucial at work. Without sleep, you may not be able to do your job correctly.

f) Improved mood (no crankiness!)

When you’re deprived of sleep, you’re irritable and quickly get annoyed or angry. This is because your mind is slow on the processing of things. What’s more, you promptly get stressed as you need to hit a deadline, but your account isn’t working correctly.

You’re getting overwhelmed with all the things that you have to do. And the next thing you know, you’re screaming at the person who’s asking you for a stapler.

With sleep, you have more than enough energy to spare. As a result, you’re not stressed out. You have that calm and all-is-well vibe, which allows you to do your work with ease. You will even have the time to accommodate your colleague’s questions, assist them, oh, and lend them that stapler without yelling.

2. Two Sleep Hacks You Can Try

If you’re bent on working on that project and powering through, here are two pro-tips on smart napping:

a) The Quick Nap | Healthy Sleep Will Help You Work Better

Take a quick nap– either a 15-minute or a 90-minute nap. The timing is specific to the stages of sleep. So when done right, you’d wake up feeling rested and alert.

The 15-minute nap involves the first stage of sleep. The technique is, you have to wake up before your body goes into a deep sleep. This makes you feel rested and alert, which you would need if you keep nodding off.

Don’t forget to set the alarm. If you don’t wake up before entering the deep sleep phase, your head will feel heavy, and you’re groggier than before you went to sleep.

The 90-minute nap involves a full cycle of REM sleep. So you reap all the benefits of a full night’s sleep in 90 minutes!

b) The Coffee Nap | Healthy Sleep Will Help You Work Better

Another tip is to drink coffee before napping.

Crazy, right? The thing is, coffee takes about 20-30 minutes to take effect. So by drinking coffee and then immediately nap, when you wake up from that 15-minute power nap, you’d feel the effects of coffee and experience the benefits of your rest.

3. Conclusion | Healthy Sleep Will Help You Work Better

Now you know the benefits of healthy sleep. And some napping tips as a bonus! Work is essential, but do you know what is more important than that? Your health, which you can take care of if you sleep well.

I hope this post inspired you to sleep even when there’s work to be done! Proper balance, of course. So go ace your work, but first, you need to sleep!