Sleep On It

Is it after midnight, and you feel like there just isn't enough time to learn everything you need to know?

Don't cram. Instead, put the books away and go to sleep, says a study on the subject.

"It may seem counterintuitive in the moment" says Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts Mental Health Center, "but sleep is essential to learning." According to his study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, people who stay up all night cramming show little improvement in their performance.

After training 24 participants in new tasks, Stickgold's team of researchers kept half of the participants awake until the second night of the study while allowing the other half to sleep. All of the subjects were allowed to sleep on the second and third nights, but on the fourth day of the study, those who had also slept the first night performed better than they had the first day, while those who didn't sleep showed no improvement.

Stickgold's advice? "Take a deep breath, get ready, and relax."