Here’s something we can all relate to on a Monday: Bob Sutton recently wrote a post on an article from the Academy of Management Review titled “Sleep Deprivation and Decision-Making Teams: Burning the Midnight Oil or Playing with Fire?”

Staying up late for work may sometimes be a necessary evil. What this article’s research found was that, while individual sleep deprivation has been studied, the effects of serious fatigue on an entire group are a relatively new subject. This is a shame, since an entire group of those fatigued individuals can seriously affect the process and outcome of a project.

No big surprise that sleep deprivation hinders productivity and can make you less patient and more inclined to argue, but its collective effects on a team can really make work unpleasant. The article finds a connection between sleep deprivation and disasters like Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island. The mistakes we make may not be as serious as a nuclear meltdown (we hope), but could be as disastrous as the classic accidental “Reply All” click.

Of course, we all want to do our best at our jobs and sometimes that means logging in the extra hours. But it’s still interesting and important to note that science once again proves sleep as an element of mental and physical health. Maybe it’s time the CATS Software office instated mandatory nap time? Just a thought…