21 benefits of sleep 2

Unless you are lucky enough to be able to set your own schedule, you are probably working a standard 9 to 5 job. Working a 9 to 5 job probably means you are getting up early in the morning to get ready then go against traffic to get to the office. Chances are you may not be getting enough sleep to meet the bare minimum amount of sleep you need to function well. Many who can relate to this might remedy it with coffee (caffeine), but that is only a temporary solution.

There are many benefits to getting an adequate amount of sleep. The benefits of sleep are beneficial and desirable for everyone. It is especially important to software developers.

I have compiled a list of some of the benefits of good sleep and how it is important for developers. Without a particular order of importance, here are the benefits:

1. Improve memory

Do you ever get that “foggy” feeling when you do not get enough sleep? That “foggy” feeling makes it difficult to concentrate, which often leads to memory problems about facts, faces, conversations, or lessons. Studies have shown that while you are sleeping, your brain is busy organizing and correlating memories.

One of the biggest benefits of sleep is that it allows your brain to process new information and experiences better. This means that just by getting an adequate amount of sleep, you can boost your learning.  In software development, you are more than likely to learn something new each day.

2. Spur creativity

Getting a good night sleep does more than consolidate your memories. When you are asleep, your brain also reorganizes and restructures them, which can result in more creativity. It is a common occurrence in software development, where you sleep on a problem and wake up the next day with a solution.

Research from Harvard University and Boston College found that people seem to strengthen the emotional aspect of a memory during sleep. This may help spur the creativity process. Sometimes, you have to get creative to come up with a solution to a problem. This holds true in software development as well.

3. Sharpen attention

Getting enough sleep can boost your attention to details. It keeps you alert throughout the day, which allows you to catch mistakes you would not catch otherwise. This is critical in software development because it helps you avoid errors and prevent them. How many developers are probably guilty of using a comma instead of a semi-colon or forgot to end a statement with a semi-colon?

4. Lower stress

A good night sleep can help lower blood pressure and reduces the level of stress hormones. Having high blood pressure can be life-threatening and the physical effects of stress can wear out your body. When this happens, it causes cells to degenerate, which propels the aging process. Sleep helps to slow down these effects and encourages a state of relaxation.

5. Steer clear of depression

Those who sleep less tend to have more problems with depression, lower self-esteem, and anxiety. For a moody person, getting enough sleep can decrease their anxiety. By getting good sleep, you are more emotionally stable. This can go a long way for developers since we are problem solvers and the solution will take many trials and errors to reach.

6. Have a healthy weight

Sleep helps regulate the hormones (leptin) that affect our appetite. Studies have shown that when you are sleep deprived, the hormone balance becomes disrupt. As a result, your appetite increases.

Unfortunately, just consuming vegetables and fruits cannot satisfy the increased appetite. Instead, your body craves for foods that are high in calories, fat, and carbohydrates. This makes maintaining a stable weight difficult. To make matter worst, as developers we are often sitting down at our workspace instead of walking around.

7. Better health

Studies have found a link between lack of sleep and health problems, such as heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes, and obesity. In one study, researchers observed the effects of disturbed sleep pattern in 10 young healthy adults. After only four days, three of them had blood glucose levels that qualified as pre-diabetic.

Your cardiovascular system is constantly under pressure and sleep helps by reducing the stress and inflammation in your body. Sleep can help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Both of them relate to the likelihood of heart diseases.

8. Better mood

Studies have shown that sleep loss has a strong impact on your mood. It affects your mood more than your cognitive abilities or motor function. As developers, we are coming up with solutions every day, which relies strongly on our cognitive abilities. Therefore, it is extremely important to get good sleep.

In addition, poor sleep affects your level of happiness. According to one notable study that followed 909 working women, poor sleep influenced their happiness as much as difficult deadlines. The study also showed that it had an even larger impact on mood than significant income differences among the group.

9. More clear thinking

When you wake up after a bad night of sleep, you are likely to feel fuzzy and easily confused. It feels like your brain is incapable of processing anything. This happens because sleep loss affects how you think. It impairs your attention, cognition, and your decision-making.

From studies, sleep-deprived people are substantially worse at solving math or logic problems than when they are well rested. This is crucial for developers since we do solve logic problems on a daily basis.

10. Stronger immunity system

Getting good sleep can help prevent common sickness, such as the cold. In a study, researcher tracked over 150 people and monitored their sleep habits for two weeks. Afterward, they exposed them to the common cold virus.

The results were that the people who are consistently getting bad sleep were almost three times more likely to get sick. Much more research is necessary to establish a true relation between sleep and sickness, but it does allude to a possible relation.

Those who get good sleep do have better short-term memory. When researchers ask adults to do a task once, get good sleep, and then try the task again, they showed improvement. Participants in the experiment who did not get good sleep had a more difficult time trying to improve their skills. This was the case even when they practiced and had a chance to sleep (not good sleep). There is something about sleep deprivation that impairs your ability to learn.

It is a common occurrence for developers to learn something new every day. Therefore, it is vital you get good sleep to accelerate your learning rate as much as possible. If you are interested in learning faster, I go into more details here.

12. Better and safer driver

Sleepiness affects our reaction time and decision-making. When you are sleep deprived, it can be detrimental to your driving ability. Driving sleepy is just like driving drunk. Both are common causes of serious injuries. In a test environment, sleep deprived drivers performed just like drunk drivers.

13. Less likely to make risky financial decisions

When you are sleep deprived or tired, the way that you make financial decisions changes. You start looking for big gains even if it is risky. With good sleep, you probably would have focused on minimizing loss instead.

14. Better speech

Being sleep deprived impairs your ability to speak well. It causes slurred speech, repetitive word usage, and a slow monotone to everything you say. This makes you come off as uneducated or unprofessional. Keep this in mind the next time when you have a presentation coming up.

15. Help prevent migraines and headaches

If you are finding yourself to suffer from constant head pains, you should review your sleep schedule. Many studies support a relation between sleep and migraines although the precise reason is not known. If you want to be productive or even enjoy your day, you need to start the day without head pains.

16. More productive and focused

There is a strong correlation between how tired you are and your ability to concentrate. Being sleep deprived makes it harder for you to concentrate, which can easily take a toll on both work and your personal life. If you want to be able to focus, you need to get good sleep.

Being able to focus is extremely crucial for developers. Much of what you do demands attention and focus. Not being able to enter a focused state, you are unable to produce any results.

17. Less likely to make dangerous mistakes

You may not recognize it, but when you are sleep deprived, you are more likely to make mistakes. Depending on what you are doing it can have dire consequences. For example, you may delete something important from a code base or “improve” a piece of code. Then that piece of code causes everything else to break (anyone been guilty of this?).

18. Better vision

I am not saying getting good sleep will perform a miracle like letting you see clearly again without glasses. But good sleep does let you start the day with your vision at its best. When our body gets tired so does our eyes. So this means the longer you stay awake, the more vision errors you will experience. You may start seeing double and at the severe level, hallucinations.

Software developers need to read constantly from their computer monitors. It would not be good if you are seeing double the whole time.

19. Less likely to be irritable or upset

When you are sleep deprived, your emotions are unstable and you are more irritable. Little things can make you blow up or just ruin your entire day. Being a software developer, you can expect to run into little things that prevent your code from working throughout the day. You do not want to become upset a couple of times throughout the day.

20. Feel less pain

Being sleep deprived makes you more sensitive to pain. This is tough on those who suffer from chronic pain. Experiments showed that people who got bad sleep could feel pain more easily. There is evidence that getting bad sleep can interfere with pain relief drugs. It is possible for good sleep to be like a low form of pain remedy.

21. Better reactions

Researchers have conducted experiments with groups of people that have great reaction time to start with. Most notably with college athletes and West Point cadets. In both experiments, the participants were asked to have a bad night of sleep and then have their performance observed the next day. The results in both cases were that physical strength was not affected by a night of bad sleep, but people’s reaction time was not as quick. The conclusion drawn is that in a sleep-deprived state your ability to use information to make decisions diminished.

The benefits of good sleep are extensive and can make a huge impact on your quality of life.

If there are any other benefits that I have missed, feel free to leave a comment. If you found this list helpful, share it with someone else who can benefit from the list. Also, follow me on twitter for more similar content.