Podcast extract: Sleep and performance

HOST: One of the more counter-intuitive findings in recent sleep research is that the people most confident in their ability to function on little sleep are, on average, the worst at judging their own impairment. GUEST: Right, and what makes that finding especially awkward is that self-assessment is the main tool most of us use to decide whether we are safe to drive, to operate equipment, or to make a consequential decision. HOST: So the advice to 'trust how you feel' breaks down precisely in the cases where accurate judgment matters most. GUEST: Exactly. There is a further wrinkle, though, which is that chronic partial sleep loss — the four or five hours a night that many professionals run on for months — produces a pattern of impairment that does not feel like impairment. It feels like ordinary life. People adapt to the subjective experience even as their measured performance continues to decline. HOST: Which suggests that the remedy is not only more sleep but better instruments for noticing you need it. GUEST: That is how I would put it, yes.