MONDAY COLUMN: "HUMAN PERFORMANCE"

What if sleeping more on weekends wasn’t enough to erase our sleep debt? Monday morning. The alarm rings. A new week begins. After several short nights, many of us make the same promise: “This weekend, I’ll catch up.” So on Saturday and Sunday, we sleep longer. A good idea? Probably. Enough? Not necessarily. Because sleep does not work quite like a bank account, where a few extra hours would automatically erase the week’s short nights. Recovery sleep can be beneficial. But recent studies remind us that another dimension matters just as much: sleep regularity. When our bedtimes and wake times shift sharply between weekdays and the weekend, we also shift our biological rhythms. In the end, the best strategy may not be to sleep much longer on Sunday morning. It starts with having less sleep to catch up on. Sleep enough. Sleep regularly. And use the weekend to recover when needed — rather than to systematically repair five short nights. Weekend sleep can repair part of the week. It should not become the excuse for sleeping poorly from Monday to Friday.