You’ve likely heard the importance of studying hard to get good grades, but how many people have told you to get a good night’s rest before your big exam? You may be surprised, but sleep plays a vital role in how we learn and our academic performance, among other essential parts of our day-to-day lives. As an inseparable part of our health and life, sleep is necessary if we want to excel in school, whether we’re in high school or college.
This article will explore the science behind sleep and learning, exploring why sleep boosts our learning and grades. We’ll look at how sleep helps with memory consolidation, attention, focus, and more. We’ll also examine how poor sleep can impact your performance on exams and more, showing that you’ll need to prioritize your sleep to encourage the best academic performance. Let’s start by seeing how sleep and learning are connected.
How Are Sleep and Learning Connected?
Over the years, researchers have discovered that not only can sleep help us with our overall health, but it can also encourage our learning. It all comes down to the sleep stages we endure overnight and how this impacts our brains and bodies. During REM sleep and slow-wave sleep, our brain is responsible for the consolidation of memories, potentially both emotional and episodic in nature. The more REM sleep that you get, the more emotional memories you’re able to consolidate.
Because of the importance of the REM sleep stage on our memory, it’s clear how our sleep can impact our brain functioning and learning. In fact, if you end up losing out on sleep or suffering from sleep deprivation, you could end up struggling to learn because of the fact that your brain is not primed to encode new information to memory. The purpose of sleep is, ultimately, to reorganize and store information. So, if you fail to do so, then your brain will be inattentive and forget what you have attempted to learn!
When you get more sleep, you improve your capacity to learn, as well as your mood and overall health. You’ll enjoy more focus, attention, and the ability to solve complex problems with more ease. You’ll also likely be more creative and have better decision-making skills. Less sleep is commonly associated with higher levels of stress, which could make for a difficult time if you’re trying to get through exams at the end of your school term! Unfortunately, lack of quality sleep can hurt your grades and academic potential in ways you might never expect.
How Poor Sleep Affects Academic Performance
If you’ve ever struggled with sleep before heading to school, then you know some of the ways that poor rest can affect you. From sleepiness to impaired performance in the classroom, less rest can wreak havoc on your report card. When you get enough sleep, you have a higher grade point average, but the opposite happens when you begin to struggle with getting nightly rest or even enough sleep at night (Source: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications).
However, this is not the case for everyone, as some only saw increased stress—not lowered grades—as a result of their lousy sleep. Some researchers have been able to decipher that sleep can cause variations in one’s academic performance by as much as 25%, which is quite extensive compared to other variables! Regardless of the actual impact on your grades, sleep deprivation leads to less concentration and poor cognitive performance, so poor sleep can lead to poor academic performance or a more challenging time getting better grades.
Whether you struggle with more anxiety and stress, poor concentration, or actual dips in your grade point average, there are some ways you can overcome these challenges so you maintain your academic excellence, no matter what sleep challenges you may be facing.
Tips for Quality Rest to Enhance Your Learning and Academic Performance
If you’re struggling to get enough sleep but want to enhance your learning, we have a few tips to help you. From maintaining a consistent sleep schedule to practicing healthy habits, here’s what we recommend so you continue to get good grades without losing out on nightly rest:
- Keep a Consistent Schedule: One of the worst things you can do for yourself is to have a flexible sleep schedule. The less consistent your schedule is, the less likely you are to ensure quality rest. If you have a busy schedule, you should set boundaries, like avoiding technology use in bed, to help you rest and get ample rest. As long as you’re waking up and going to bed at roughly the same time every day, you can ensure quality rest.
- Create a Proper Sleep Environment: There’s no benefit to being surrounded by potential sleep disruptions, so take steps to make your bedroom as cozy as possible. Use your favorite sheets, pillows, and more while also potentially adding in blackout curtains. You should also ensure the temperature is set to the correct setting so you are cool and comfortable. With the right setting, you can get enough rest every single night.
- Practice Healthy Sleep Habits: Just like healthy eating and exercise keep you well, healthy sleep habits keep your sleep as optimal and restful as possible. That means limiting caffeine after the early afternoon, not eating heavy meals before bed, and also incorporating relaxation techniques before bed. You can read, meditate, take a bath, or listen to some ASMR to help you wind down and prepare for sleep. That also means putting down the technology and reading a book instead to rest your eyes.
What Strategies Will You Use to Support Your Academic Performance?
Now that you know how important your sleep is to your academic performance, you can take steps to support excellent grades. Whether you’re in high school or college or simply want to encourage better cognitive performance as an adult, these strategies will help support optimal health. What will you do starting today to prioritize your sleep health and performance?
