Sleep deprivation and the resultant tiredness can have a significant impact on your performance. With the stressful and demanding routines we all have, catching eight hours of sleep often becomes a challenge. While we try to make up for that with energy drinks and loads of caffeine, the temporary kick does nothing to improve our performance.

If you thought your slacking performance was a lack of skills and not from the effect of not sleeping well, then you may need to rethink.

Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Your Performance

We’re living in an always working and hyper-connected world. Due to this culture, we spend more waking hours at work, which has a detrimental effect on the quality and quantity of our sleep. Several studies have explored the damaging consequences of a lack of sleep among professionals, especially business owners and they all conclude the same thing.

The findings prove that sleep deprivation can ultimately hinder our ability to perform at optimum levels at work. It also has devastating emotional and physical side effects that ruin work performance and personal lives as well as our health.

All in all, it is safe to say that if you’re not sleeping well and enough, you are on the path of self-destruction. Let’s take a look at several ways your lack of quality sleep can be affecting your performance.

1. Low Productive Capacity of Sleep-Deprived Business Owners

By not sleeping sufficiently and soundly, you make way for a major loss of productivity and quality of work. It worsens your working relationships and causes significant gaps in your communication, learning, growth, and concentration.

A sleep-deprived entrepreneur develops multiple negative attributes, including a short-temper, memory lapses, declined problem-solving ability, and more. When you go to work in a state of sleep deprivation, you’re not in the best disposition and are more prone to reactionary outbursts and moodiness.

You must note that when your temper and reactionary outbursts occur too frequently on your behalf, it sours your work relationships. This has a ripple effect, and the bitterness in working relationships keeps spreading till it impacts your entire organization. Clearly, that is never a good thing for your business and team members, and can even lead to grave consequences like contract termination with clients, loss of a potential clients, and losing good team members, etc.

There are multiple serious problems sleep deprivation causes in both the workplace and personal life. In fact, many cite it as the primary cause of motor vehicle and industrial vehicle accidents. It is also one of the leading causes of absenteeism.

2. Takes a Toll on Physical Health

Poor work performance and a bad reputation in the industry are among the worst experiences for a business owner. But the drastic consequences do not end there. Lack of sleep takes a significant toll on one’s physical health too.

Many individuals tend to brush off a constant feeling of lethargy while failing to acknowledge that it is a symptom of sleep shortage. Lack of sleep can also have other symptoms, such as palpitations, heartburn, etc., but we mostly ignore those.

The truth remains that these symptoms all relate to sleep shortage and can decrease our immune function and physical health in the long term. With time, you will earn a poor reputation at work and become susceptible to common illnesses. Some of these include obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, resulting from chronic sleep deprivation.

I don’t need to highlight how a scattered and unhealthy person suffering from multiple health issues will surely not be an impressively active business owner!

3. Poor Decision-Making Abilities

Sleep deprivation not only deteriorates your physical health and work performance but could also give way to dangerous outcomes. The fact is that with poor concentration and thinking abilities, you lose the ability to perceive, judge, an