Dear colleagues, I am pleased to say that the results of our "Sleep Into The Future" trial are now in. For background, you all know how evangelical Stew is about his own sleep routine and the importance of feeling rested. The evidence from other industries is clear about the negative effects of sleep deprivation. For these reasons, we decided to roll out a series of pilot trials to our team in Canada and to the legal function worldwide, designed to ensure that all our colleagues feel energised and ready to do their best work. I have laid out the main findings below, along with a recommendation on next steps.

亲爱的同事们，我很高兴地告诉大家，我们的“睡向未来”试验结果已经出炉。 背景情况是，大家都知道斯图对自己的睡眠习惯以及感觉休息充分的重要性有多么狂热。 来自其他行业的证据清楚地表明了睡眠不足的负面影响。 基于这些原因，我们决定在加拿大团队和全球法务部门推出一系列试点试验，旨在确保所有同事都感到精力充沛，准备好以最佳状态投入工作。 以下是我整理的主要发现，以及对下一步行动的建议。

We ran a specific initiative called "Waking Hours", in which volunteers experimented with pre-industrial sleep patterns. There is some evidence to suggest that humans used to rise in the middle of the night after a first sleep, to do whatever it was that people did back then, before having a second sleep. Our volunteers were asked to wake at 2am in order to do work for two hours, before then going back to bed. Some people adjusted to this rhythm; others found it difficult to fall asleep again and entered a state of catatonic exhaustion. At least one big sales lead evaporated when our salesperson's second sleep took place in the middle of a client meeting.

我们开展了一项名为“清醒时刻”的具体计划，让志愿者体验前工业时代的睡眠模式。 有一些证据表明，人类过去常常在第一觉之后半夜起身，做当时人们会做的那些事，然后再睡第二觉。 我们的志愿者被要求凌晨2点醒来工作两个小时，然后再回去睡觉。 有些人适应了这种节奏；另一些人则难以再次入睡，陷入了紧张性疲惫状态。 至少有一个大销售线索泡汤了，因为我们的销售人员在客户会议进行到一半时进入了第二觉。

There were unexpected ripple effects. When senior people began sending emails and Slack messages at 3am, more junior team members who were not involved in the trial began waking much earlier in order to respond promptly. In turn, their pre-dawn activity prompted even more colleagues to start work earlier. Once this cascade effect is taken into account, we think that sleep quality in the organisation as a whole declined.

还产生了意想不到的连锁反应。 当高管们在凌晨3点开始发送电子邮件和Slack消息时，未参与试验的初级团队成员开始更早醒来以便及时回复。 反过来，他们的黎明前活动又促使更多同事更早开始工作。 一旦考虑到这种级联效应，我们认为整个组织的睡眠质量下降了。

We dispatched a variety of sleep trackers—rings, wristbands, watches and more—to participants. One-fifth of colleagues were unable to get the devices to work at all, which suggests a concerning lack of technological nous. (We are rolling out a separate training programme, Appiness at Work, to tackle that problem.)

我们向参与者分发了各种睡眠追踪器——戒指、腕带、手表等等。 五分之一的同事完全无法让设备正常工作，这表明技术素养令人担忧地匮乏。 （我们正在推出一个单独的培训项目——“工作中的App快乐”——来解决这个问题。）

Tracker data are imperfect, which caused a fair degree of stress. Of those employees who did use the trackers, many reported feeling perfectly rested until their tracker told them they had had a terrible night. Others were told that they had slept like a baby when they had actually been lying awake worrying about the quality of their sleep. These inaccuracies make it hard to interpret data showing that many of our employees are sleeping during the day. The entire senior leadership team appears to have nodded off during a recent meeting, which of course cannot be true.

追踪器数据并不完美，这造成了相当大的压力。 在确实使用了追踪器的员工中，许多人报告说感觉自己休息得很好，直到追踪器告诉他们昨晚睡得很糟。 另一些人则被告知睡得像个婴儿，而实际上他们一直躺在床上清醒地担心着自己的睡眠质量。 这些不准确之处使得数据难以解读——数据显示我们许多员工在白天睡觉。 整个高级领导团队似乎在最近一次会议上都打起了瞌睡，这当然不可能是真的。

We tested a number of other smaller interventions, with varying degrees of success. Team members were sent a host of sleep aids, including masks, wraparound snoozebands, earplugs and mouthguards to prevent teeth-grinding. These worked better for some colleagues than others. A few people using masks had panic attacks when they woke in the night because they thought they had been taken hostage. One of our smaller colleagues was unable to get out from under her weighted blanket, and had to be released by the fire brigade.

我们还测试了其他一些较小的干预措施，成效参差不齐。 团队成员收到了各种睡眠辅助用品，包括眼罩、环绕式睡眠带、耳塞和防止磨牙的牙套。 这些对某些同事的效果比其他人更好。 一些使用眼罩的人在夜间醒来时发生了恐慌发作，因为他们以为自己被劫持了。 我们一位身材较小的同事被自己的重力毯压住无法脱身，最后不得不由消防队将她解救出来。

Magnesium tablets were sent to a subset of volunteers, but due to an unfortunate error, we told people to take much higher doses than recommended. Magnesium can act as a laxative; this trial has therefore been voided.

我们向一部分志愿者发放了镁片，但由于一个不幸的失误，我们告诉人们服用的剂量远高于推荐值。 镁可以起到通便作用；因此这项试验已被废止。

Our survey data show that team members regarded lavender spray and herbal teas as generally pleasant, but they did not have significant effects on sleep quality. One member of the legal team accidentally lavender-sprayed himself in the face and had to go to hospital for a precautionary check-up. There is ongoing litigation connected with this incident, and we recommend not using lawyers as guinea pigs in future pilot programmes of any sort.

我们的调查数据显示，团队成员认为薰衣草喷雾和花草茶总体上令人愉悦，但它们对睡眠质量没有显著影响。 法务团队的一名成员不小心将薰衣草喷雾喷到了自己脸上，不得不去医院做预防性检查。 与此事件相关的诉讼正在进行中，我们建议今后任何类型的试点项目都不要用律师做小白鼠。

More generally, we recommend against pushing people to participate in this kind of initiative. It's fine to make sleep aids available to people who request them. And enabling colleagues to share advice on sleep in an informal way is a good idea. For example, some people made specific recommendations for things to listen to when falling asleep—among them, audio versions of anything published by the World Bank, post-match interviews with athletes and every investor-relations conference call ever.

更广泛地说，我们建议不要强迫人们参与这类计划。 向有需求的人提供睡眠辅助用品是可以的。 让同事们以非正式方式分享睡眠建议也是个好主意。 例如，有些人给出了入睡时听什么的具体建议——其中包括世界银行发布的任何内容的音频版、运动员赛后采访，以及有史以来每一场投资者关系电话会议。

But tracking employee behaviour in the dead of night is intrusive, and imposing uniform solutions on everyone is ineffective. Before rolling this out further, we should definitely sleep on it.

但是，在深更半夜追踪员工行为具有侵扰性，而且对所有人强加统一方案是无效的。 在进一步推广之前，我们绝对应该先睡一觉再说。