Sleep and learning

[Book] Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
We all know sleep is important for (mental) health, but what do the numbers say?

According to the book:

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams"Sleeping well can boost your learning with 20 to 40% in comparison to those who are sleep-deprived."The problem, however, is that it’s hard for  long-term  sleep-deprived people to know they are sleep-deprived. However, according to the book, just 1 hour of less sleep for 10 nights is sufficient to make your performance equivalent to someone who is drunk. This includes driving, learning, reaction time, and so on.

One hour of less sleep every day, sadly, is a reality for many people and especially students.

So how does sleep enhance learning?

The Mechanics of Sleep In Learning
First of all, as we progress throughout the day learning new stuff, they are mostly stored in the hippocampus. This brain region, however, has a relatively small space to store memories and can get full quickly.

What happens during sleep, is that these memories either get transferred from the hippocampus to the neocortex (which has a much bigger storage space) or they get removed.

See: Memory consolidation on Wikipedia for more information

A lack of sleep results in your hippocampus not being completely emptied (or almost) nor are your memories that well consolidated (strengthened). This, in turn, makes it harder to learn and remember new things the next day.

Sleep and Productivity
If you had to choose between earning $80,000 a year while working normal hours and getting good sleep versus $140,000 while working insane hours and only sleep 6 hours a day, what would you choose?

Most people would choose the latter. The book, however, teaches that you can get both in the long-term, namely earning $140,000 while sleeping well every night.

Why? Because you make less errors, are much more creative, and so on when having slept well.

This, too, counts for studying and learning things."Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity."

Improving Your Sleep Quality
For those interested, Bill Gates wrote a review on the same book mentioning tips to improve your sleep quality:

Bill Gates's Reviews > Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams