“It is also to optimize life.”įor example, a recent study of police officers in Quebec by researchers in the Netherlands and Canada showed that people with different chronotypes had divergent reactions to working morning, evening, and overnight shifts. “When we think about optimizing sleep and aligning circadian rhythms with work hours, this is not only to optimize work,” says Vetter. The results could stretch far beyond improved productivity. Instead, we should consider the growing body of evidence that suggests that scheduling the workday to optimize sleep cycles would be better for people’s physical and psychological health.
Now, as more businesses and schools are transitioning back to normal routines, some scientists argue that we shouldn’t necessarily return to the way things were in January 2020. In other words, work schedules fundamentally change how and when people sleep, often causing them to sleep less-and rise earlier-than they would if they were just following their own circadian rhythm. “What it really says is that work is really a powerful determinant of our sleep behavior,” says Vetter, who directs the university’s Circadian and Sleep Epidemiology Lab. And it’s not just American students who have been spending more time snoozing other studies found that during early lockdowns in Argentina and Europe, people slept longer and woke up later.Ĭéline Vetter, one of the authors of the Colorado study, says it’s hard to conclude from this data whether the pandemic has been good for our sleep habits, but it has revealed something else that’s important. They also shifted their wake times, getting out of bed nearly an hour later on school days. According to one study out of the University of Colorado Boulder, students attending class remotely slept an average of 30 minutes longer during the week, and 24 minutes longer on the weekend, than they had during the regular pre-pandemic semester. No more running to catch the subway or racing to get to campus. For many people, the pandemic has completely changed the morning routine.