Shakespeare’s Macbeth got it about right when he talked about sleep being a “balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course” but the perennial question is how much sleep is the right amount of sleep. And the answer generally boils down to ‘it depends’.

The fact is that our need for sleep changes as we move through life. In our teenage years we see our parents happily kipping in front of the TV whilst we are still wide awake. In our middle years we nap in the evening whilst our more elderly parents are still up and about and in our final years we revert to the sleep patterns of infancy.

So, within extreme guidelines, sleep patterns can be pretty individual things. But the question of how much is the right amount was highlighted recently when in the course of a few days three separate studies on sleep were released.

So, within extreme guidelines, sleep patterns can be pretty individual things. But the question of how much is the right amount was highlighted recently when in the course of a few days three separate studies on sleep were released.

The first from Australia suggested that if 2 year olds were allowed to sleep during the day then it could affect their ability to sleep well at night, not just whilst they were toddlers but also later in life.  The second study from the USA revealed that teenagers are having less sleep then they were a decade ago and the final study from France suggested that having a power nap during the day could help to repair the damage caused by a lack of sleep the previous night.

Whilst this last study was fairly restricted, its findings have been replicated elsewhere, as well as been proved in real work situations.  For example, this writer well remembers a colleague in a previous business who regularly took a quick nap in their car at lunchtime. That individual would then bounce back into the office and power through the afternoon, whilst others struggled to overcome post lunch doldrums.

In fact, visit many of the more innovative businesses nowadays and you will often find ‘sleep pods’ set up for those who feel in need of a power nap.  But whilst such businesses are fairly flexible in their daily patterns what options are available for those, such as health practitioners, who are tied up with a steady stream of appointments? It may be easy to hold off posting accounting records for 20 minutes or so; it’s not so easy to nap when you have a queue of patients all waiting for physiotherapy help.

The solution requires careful planning. If you know that around 3pm you always hit a wall of tiredness then block out your diary from 3-3.15, switch the phones to a virtual answering service so that you aren’t disturbed and put your feet up.  If 5pm is your ‘dead time’ then plan to take a break then, again with an answering service taking care of calls and bookings.

But napping is one thing, making sure that you get enough sleep at night is quite another. Particularly when you work for yourself or in a small health practice it is all too common to find routine paperwork intruding on sleep time. Before I go to bed I’ll just answer that letter or email, file those records, prepare for the next day’s work; perhaps seemingly logical actions in order to get through the workload but ones which can leave you feeling tired the next day. The solution is not to work harder but to work smarter; to cut down on routine paperwork with electronic filing and card payments taking the strain and create time for yourself.

How much sleep time is the right sleep time?  We don’t know but one thing all of the studies agree on is that if you don’t get enough sleep for your needs then symptoms such as irritability, slow thought processes and clumsy mistakes will surely follow.