Gen Z is Missing ZZZs: What the Research Says About Sleep and Early Career Performance
Life has been extra lately, which means my sleep has been less than ideal. Sick kids, aging parents, surgeries for loved ones, unexpected changes to income — it's been a perfect storm. After about a week of getting fewer sleeping hours than normal, I noticed big shifts in my energy and my productivity. Small tasks felt big. Big tasks felt impossible.
It got me thinking back to my early career days transitioning from university life to corporate life. University life had much less structure for me. Have a test tomorrow? Cram until midnight. Invite to a party that starts at 10 pm? I can’t be the lame friend that doesn’t show.
And then all of the sudden I’m thrown into work where I’m expected to be productive from 8 am to 5 pm — or in my case as an auditor, sometimes from 8am to 10pm. The transition was rough for me and it took me a while before I figured out that I just had to go to bed by a certain time every night.
Because of that memory, I went looking for research on how early career employees are doing with sleep. Here's what I’m finding.
Gen Z and Sleep: The Numbers Are Worth Paying Attention To
The CDC recommends at least seven hours of sleep per night for adults — yet a third of U.S. adults consistently fall short of that. For Gen Z, the challenge is compounded by two specific factors: technology and anxiety. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 93% of Gen Z have lost sleep because they stayed up past their bedtime due to social media. And research from Aviva found that 77% of Gen Z employees say they are frequently kept up at night thinking about work — more than any other generation.
What the Research Says Is Actually Happening to Your Performance
Research suggests that sleep deprivation leads to measurable declines in job performance, productivity, career progression, and satisfaction. In addition, there is a correlation with increases in absenteeism and counterproductive work behaviors. Better sleep, by contrast, is linked to improved memory, knowledge acquisition, and learning.
A Hult International Business School study of over 1,000 professionals found that the average professional sleeps just six hours and 28 minutes — below the recommended minimum. More than half reported struggling to stay focused in meetings, taking longer to complete tasks, and finding it harder to generate new ideas. And while the results of our sleep may not be disastrous, they actually could be. For example, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster may have caused in part due to lack of sleep by key managers:
“[…] interviews revealed that because of the launch scrub on January 27 certain key managers obtained only minimal sleep the night before the teleconference or had arisen so early in the morning that they had been awake and on duty for extended periods.”
Research published in the journal SLEEP found that losing just 1.5 to 2 hours per night for a few consecutive nights is enough to increase impulsivity, increase exertion, impair cognitive control, reduce subjective performance, and decrease positive affect (e.g. energy, enthusiasm, etc.). The effects compound with additional nights.
Here's the Part Most People Miss
Some research suggests that young adults tend to underestimate the effect of sleep deprivation on their own performance. In one study comparing young and older adults, younger subjects consistently performed worse after sleep loss — but rated their own performance as less impaired than it actually was.
You think you're functioning fine. The data says you're not.
This matters especially early in your career, when you are still building your reputation, learning how to navigate a professional environment, and trying to demonstrate what you're capable of. The people around you may notice before you do.
What It Actually Looks Like
Sleep deprivation doesn't always announce itself as tiredness. It may show up as:
Taking longer than usual to start a task
Getting frustrated more easily in meetings or with routine tasks
Not grasping directions from your manager right away
Second-guessing decisions you'd normally make confidently
Others asking “Are you okay?,” and you not fully understanding what they are seeing because you don’t feel sick.
Those aren't you being not smart enough or not strong enough. They're symptoms of sleep deprivation.
What the Research Says Actually Helps
The fix isn't complicated — it's just consistent:
Seven to nine hours is the recommended range for adults in their 20s
Consistency matters as much as duration — irregular schedules disrupt your body's internal clock even when total hours look adequate
Screens before bed delay sleep onset — the late-night scroll is working against you more than you realize
The transition from college to work schedules takes intentional adjustment, not just willpower
You don't have to overhaul your life. But if small tasks are starting to feel big and big tasks feel impossible — it might be worth looking at your sleep before anything else.
I know I did.