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To improve performance, scientists suggest sleeping longer

Alexey Kryvenko, medical expert
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025

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11 January 2017, 09:00

Medical experts from the United States reported their new discovery: it turned out that early morning rising negatively affects a person’s performance during the day.

The experiment was conducted with the participation of able-bodied volunteers who were engaged in the same field of activity, but had different work schedules.

Based on the results of the experiment, experts determined that those workers who started their work 1-2 hours later demonstrated higher quality labor productivity, in contrast to those people who came to work “early”.

Experts calculated that the productivity of the first category of workers was approximately 18% higher.

At the end of the study, the scientists conducted a survey among the volunteers. As a result, it was discovered that the people themselves had previously noticed: after waking up early, it was more difficult for them to start work, and their productivity began to increase only a few hours after the start of the working day. By the way, among the workers who came to work "at the crack of dawn", there were slightly fewer people who achieved high-quality professional and career growth.

A little earlier, scientists came to the conclusion that daytime sleep can also hinder successful career growth: according to the results of the experiments, daytime sleep is the prerogative of poor people, without any special life goals. Successful people still prefer to rest at night.

This study involved workers in similar specialties and professions, belonging to the age category of 27-45 years.

Based on the results of this experiment, the following conclusions were made:

Those who wake up 1-2 hours later maintain optimal performance throughout the day and are more successful at work.
"owls" had slightly higher IQ scores than "larks";
Those who woke up a little later had higher levels of both intellectual and physical activity;
Workers who started their workday a little later were found to be better adapted to the work environment.

At the same time, those sleep lovers who came to the office closer to lunchtime were worse than the first two categories of workers in terms of their work capacity. Scientists concluded that excessive sleep can reduce the work capacity coefficient to almost a minimum. Having slept at home, many subjects continued to "sleep" at work.

In general, the question of the benefits and harms of early awakening is considered by world experts from a much broader perspective. A huge contribution to the study of this problem is made by scientists from Great Britain, who regularly conduct similar experiments on the presence of a connection between early and late awakening and other aspects of human life.

Thus, scientists are examining the influence of sleep duration on body weight, on the development of chronic somatic and even mental illnesses, on life expectancy, etc.

Let us recall that recently somnologists determined why it is difficult for some people to wake up in the morning?