Getting up early for work may increase job tension and decrease life satisfaction.
Using an alarm clock during the week and snoozing in on weekends causes social jetlag.
Artificially waking up to an alarm throws off our internal body rhythm, so it feels similar to jetlag after traveling to a different time zone.
According to a recent study, individuals with greater social jetlag experience greater job stress and lesser life satisfaction.
Researchers examined a survey submitted by approximately 4,500 individuals in the Czech Republic between 2018 and 2020.
The poll asked when respondents went to bed and woke up on weekends and non-working days.
The difference between these periods was used to calculate the “sleep debt” of individuals.
Sleep debt and social jetlag reduced life satisfaction on a one-to-ten range.
When asked if they had experienced three forms of work stress in the previous 12 months, they scored lower.
These included job loss, overwork, and workplace mishaps.
The findings suggest that an individual’s unnaturally early weekday mornings may cause them to feel more pressured.
However, the study found that self-reported sleep quality may be the most significant factor for overall quality of life.
Good sleepers, like those with less jetlag, were happier and less worried at work.
But they were also cheerful and reported improved health and well-being.
Michaela Kudrnaova, the study’s lead author from Charles University in Prague, stated, “In modern society. We have strict schedules that require us to wake up for work and school..
‘Social jetlag is understudied, but it is significant because it is difficult to make up lost sleep on the weekend.
These results suggest that social jetlag may have an impact on life satisfaction and work tension. Therefore, further research is required.
The study, which was published in the journal PLOS ONE, used a simple scoring procedure based on the midpoint of their night’s sleep to determine social jetlag.
If someone went to bed at 11 p.m. and woke up at 7 a.m. during the week, their sleep midway was 3 a.m.
Weekend sleep midpoints would be 5 a.m. if they fell asleep at midnight and got up at 10 a.m.
That would result in a sleep debt’ of two hours, which indicates the social jetlag level of the individual.
Social jetlag was not associated with people’s happiness, which they rated on a 10-point scale, or their overall well-being, which was based on how frequently they reported feeling cheerful, calm, and active during the preceding two weeks.
Neither was it associated with self-reported health, but it was associated with work stress and life satisfaction – a longer-term measure of contentment than pleasure.
Even when age and wealth, which affect quality of life, were examined, this was true.
The longer individuals slept, the worse their self-reported health and happiness, although the authors of the study speculate that this result may be skewed by the tendency of those with mental health issues to sleep longer.
People who reduced their social jetlag did not experience a significant improvement in their quality of life, but this may be because people rarely adjust their discordant sleep schedules without a major life event, such as the birth of a child or a new job with different hours.
