Sleep deprived? New study says your performance will suffer - The AI Blog

It's true: A good night's sleep really does help us do our best the next day, and a couple of bad nights of sleep could hurt us for days to come. That's according to a new study from Microsoft's research organization, which analyzed anonymized data on people's online activities and sleep behavior to show how sleep quality impacts our ability to type queries on a search engine and click on the results. The research reinforces the importance of catching ZZZs and highlights the negative influence of sleep deprivation on our ability to think and act. "When you don't sleep well, it affects your cognitive performance, which means your work performance and lots of other things," said Tim Althoff, who led the research during a summer 2016 internship with Microsoft's research organization in Redmond, Washington. For example, the study shows that people who sleep less than six hours for two consecutive nights are sluggish for the next six days.