The connection between sleep patterns and wisdom is not just a theory. A study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University looked at the effect of several variables—such as exercise, nutrition, and sleep habits—on students’ grade point average (GPA). The researchers found that of all the variables, “weekday and weekend wake-up times had the largest relative effects on semester GPA. For each hour of delay in reported average weekday wake-up time, the predicted GPA decreased by 0.132 on a standard 0.00 to 4.00 grading scale. … Each hour of delay in average weekend wake-up time corresponded to a decrease in predicted GPA of 0.115.”
Not long ago I surveyed 203 Latter-day Saint college students about their sleep patterns. On average these students awoke at 7:30 a.m. on school days and 9:15 a.m. on weekends. Their average bedtime was midnight on school nights and 1:00 a.m. on weekends. These students are going directly against the research connecting an early schedule with knowledge acquisition. Perhaps the finding that a higher GPA is the result of an early schedule is too simple to believe. Have we become like the children of Israel, who refused to follow the Lord’s antidote for snakebites “because of the simpleness of the way”? (1 Nephi 17:41; see also Helaman 8:14–15).
Consider the counsel President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, gave related to gaining wisdom: “I counsel our children to do their critical studying in the early hours of the morning when they’re fresh and alert, rather than to fight physical weariness and mental exhaustion at night. I’ve learned the power of the dictum, ‘Early to bed, early to rise.’” Perhaps this is one reason full-time missionaries follow an early-to-bed and early-to-rise schedule.
-- Randal A. Wright
To learn more: Filled with Life and Energy
