How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

Part IV
, where I talked about the way that sleep,
exercise, and the “mindful pause” improve the quality of our thinking. Here I’d
like to focus on their emotional resilience benefits, showing how sleep, exercise,
and mindfulness can improve our ability to roll with the ups and downs of
working life.
SLEEP THE GOOD SLEEP
In 
Chapter 13
, I talked about the clear cognitive benefits of getting enough sleep.
But respecting our need for sleep also improves our ability to handle worrying or
upsetting situations with aplomb. That’s because several research teams have
demonstrated what you might guess to be true: that you’re more likely to
overreact to negative things when you haven’t slept well.
1
Neuroscientists have observed this difference on brain scans of people shown
upsetting images while lying in a scanner. Volunteers who hadn’t slept showed
much more activation in their brain’s amygdala—in one study, 60 percent more
—than people who were well rested.
2
In other words, a tired brain’s survival
circuits are more jittery, and more likely to launch a fight-flight-freeze defense in
the face of something challenging or uncertain. The researchers also discovered
that tired brains found it harder to calm down once they were agitated. And by

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observing lower levels of activation in their sleep-deprived subjects’ prefrontal
cortex, the researchers could also see that people’s deliberate systems weren’t
doing as much as they might to reintroduce a more measured perspective. So no
wonder skimping on sleep makes it harder to rise above setbacks with a smile.
Other researchers have confirmed the positive side of the equation, which is
that getting decent sleep makes it easier to laugh things off the next day.
Stanford researcher Cheri D. Mah found that when she got male basketball
players to sleep ten hours a night—that sounds long, but these were kids in their
teens and early twenties, doing a lot of physical activity—their mood and
daytime energy both improved. Their hoop shooting performance also improved
hugely, by an average of 9 percent, a result the players were probably more
excited about than anything else.
3
George, the clothing manufacturer CEO we met earlier, says: “Sleep is so
underrated in the business world. Why do some people boast that they only need
five hours? What I’ve read suggests that’s unlikely—and the dysfunctional
behavior I’ve seen when people are on five hours’ sleep backs that up. If I run
short of sleep, I’m not embarrassed to say that I crash the next day in some way,
even if I look like I’m keeping going.” George used to sleep much less than he
really needed to, he says. But since becoming aware of the way that sleep boosts
both his physical and emotional stamina, he’s changed his habits and become
more proactive in getting his quota. “I started measuring my sleep with a fitness
tracker, and I’ve seen a strong correlation between low sleep averages in a week
and my feeling particularly grumpy and irritable. So now I monitor when my
average is slipping and will try to get extra sleep to make sure I catch up.”
George spends a lot of time crisscrossing the globe as he visits customers and
suppliers, so the combination of fierce jet lag and heavy workload does
occasionally see him hitting the buffers before he can get himself caught up.
He’s found he can get a useful temporary boost from napping at his desk, even
though it’s not as good as a decent night’s sleep. Research suggests that a short
nap can provide just enough sleep to aid the brain’s processing of negative
emotional experiences and dampen our instinctive reaction to unpleasant
situations.
4
That’s in line with George’s experience.
5
 “I just put my head down
and switch off for a while. I’m always clearer-headed afterward, and better able
to face the rest of the day,” he says.
So if you’re dealing with a lot of ups and downs at work, do aim to follow the
“smart sleep” guidance I shared in 
Chapter 13
. Here’s a reminder:

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View sleep as a key part of your professional armory, and prioritize it as
much as anything else you do to prepare for challenging days at work.
Recognize that your ability to sleep is strongly affected by the amount of light
you expose yourself to. Allow some wind-down time in a dimly lit bedroom
and don’t look at lit screens before sleep.
Experiment with taking more naps. Consider carrying ear plugs, an eye mask,
or nap pillow with you (or failing that, some very dark glasses).