Overnight reading which is popularly known as TDB (Till Day Break) has been a long standing tradition of students especially during exams.

It has come to be associated with virtues such as hard work, sacrifice, focus, seriousness, and is generally encouraged by teachers and elders as a necessity in order to excel.

I still clearly remember the words of my level coordinator during my first year in the university, ” for the duration of your stay in this institution, I strongly advice that you cut down on your number of sleeping hours; by half…”

Now on the surface, this might seems like a great advice from a teacher who cares. But is it?

A research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania shows that sleep deprivation not only leads to a decline in physical and mental performance (Cognitive decline, attention lapse, motor skill decline) but is also cumulative over time.

I.e. when you reduce your sleeping hours, your performance decline, and then this decline doesn’t dissipate with time; it stays with you until every hour of sleep debt is repaid.

The next finding of the research is even more interesting: Of the 48 people tested, not one of them noticed their own decline in performance.

What all this means is that as you’re trying to deprive yourself of sleep in order to get more reading done, what you’re actually doing is putting yourself in the worst possible condition to write an exam. Whatever additional hours you put in to read is more than offset by the decline in mental functions.

It’s been estimated that in the United States alone, sleep deprivation cost businesses a $100 billion each year in lost efficiency and performance. The question is, how many As and Bs is sleep deprivation costing Nigerian students?

The fact that Students hardly know about their own decline explains why a lot are astonished to see their poor performances when result come out, despite all their effort. This of course is usually blamed in the wickedness of the lecturers involved.

I know some will say, “But I read at night, and sleep during the day”. This is fine of course as long as you’re sure every hour is paid back. But I dare say this is hardly the case. I’ve seen students who read overnight and then go to write exams straight from their reading rooms. That’s like filling a leaking bucket with water, by the time you come back for it, there’s a great chance you’ll find it empty.

The reason is this: it is not while you’re awake but when you’re asleep that what you read is finally committed to memory.

There are two parts of sleep: The slow wave sleep (deep sleep) and the rapid eye movement (REM). During deep sleep, the body is renewed and repaired. During REM sleep, the body reorganises information, cleans out irrelevant ones, boost your memory and connects your experiences of the last day to your previous experiences.

It is the REM sleep that facilitates learning and neural growth. And the longer you sleep, the longer these stages take and the better for you, (anything less than 7 hours is unhealthy, says the research).

In the words of John Assaraf, CEO of Nuerogym; a brain researches company “without the slow wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can’t recover physically, your immune system weakens, your brain becomes foggy…”

This is the worst possible condition for you to be writing an exam. And it explains why a lot of students break down and become sick or even die during examinations.

The truth is, you’ll be better off sleeping than reading in preparation for an exam. And for those who’ll say, “But I’ve been doing fine all this while”, the truth is you’ve been performing far below your potential; getting Cs rather than As, and Ds rather than Bs.

If you need the best recommendation for a stellar performance in exams, here it is: Prepare before time, eat well, sleep well (7 to 9 hours every night), and take things easy. Success is far easier than you thought.