Late Night Smartphone Work Bad for Productivity, Study Finds

Are you working late at night, glued to your smartphone: checking your email, etc.? If yes – and I know a couple who do – you may want to consider changing this habit, which, as the latest study found, is “ruining your health and happiness” (via FastCoDesign).

As it turns out, the side effect of always-connected devices is counter-productivity: the artificial blue light of the smartphone influences your body’s internal clock, and it keeps you up, a new study from Michigan State University business school has found. Interestingly, other bright screens, such as laptops or television, do not have this effect.

“Smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep,” said Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management who acknowledges keeping his smartphone at his bedside at night. “Because they keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep.”

They have conducted two different studies, one with 82 upper-level managers, and the second with 161 employees from different fields such as nursing and manufacturing, and concluded the same thing: respondents who stayed up late at night working – reading, answering email, etc. – were totally counterproductive the next day.

I think it’s time to highlight this effect on your boss’ Facebook wall.

Image credit: The Daily Mail