Slow Leadership: Take an Extra Hour in Bed . . . to Grow Smarter?

Here's a happy thought from Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, in an article called: Don't feel guilty about that extra hour in bed this morning. It's made you smarter:

Extra hours in bed really are good for the brain, according to findings announced on the weekend that the clocks go back, giving people 60 minutes more sleep. Three psychologists at the University of Rome analyzed more than 100 studies on the effects of sleep on cognitive tasks and found that being awake for too long could have a serious effect on the ability to learn and remember new information. For students, a bad night's sleep could result in worse grades, they discovered.

It seems that students with higher grades reported going to bed earlier, getting more sleep, and having "more stable" sleeping patterns at weekends. Students with poor sleep patterns are more likely to fail at school and develop poor learning patterns.

It's easy to speculate on what all those students who stay up late are doing instead of learning, but there is a serious point here. Many overworked managers and professionals are forcing themselves to get by on only a few hours of sleep each night—and the definitely aren't spending all that extra waking time on anything remotely likely to cause a jolt of envy in anyone.

So give yourself a break and stay a little longer in bed. After all, you can now claim that you are doing it for your employer's sake too, so you'll be cleverer when you do—finally—make it to work.