Sleep-working

Studies say we're often drowsy at work. Here's how professional night owls cope

Get on your feet. Get moving. Rock on!

Serve those words with a pot of strong coffee: They are simple ways to stay alert at work.

According to a recent survey by the National Sleep Foundation, 29 percent of workers reported falling asleep or becoming very sleepy at work in the past month. The foundation concluded that working long hours and sleeping too little -- at least partly because we're so stressed about work -- means more people are also driving drowsy, having less sex and missing family events.

On the job, drowsiness can lower productivity, increase errors, impair problem-solving ability and the capacity to learn, recall and use information. It also has been linked with deadly accidents, including highway crashes caused by sleepy drivers and disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Poor sleep also affects workers' ability to assess their own performance, said Thomas Balkin, chief of the behavioral biology department at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Those who claim to need just a few hours of sleep a night probably aren't as efficient or productive as they could be, said Balkin, who works to help soldiers perform well under conditions that aren't conducive to good sleep.

"I assure you, anyone getting four hours a night is impaired, whether they think so or not," he said.

To get some real-world advice on how to stay awake on the job, we turned to local experts: workers whose unusual hours require them to be on their toes while many of us are still under the covers. Here are some of their tricks:

Stand up.

Karen Clark, 34, local producer for the "Tom Joyner Morning Show" at Radio One in Raleigh wakes up at 4 a.m. five days a week for the first of two jobs. She rarely sits.

"I find that I just have more energy if I'm forced to stand up," she said.

Take a nap.

After Clark wraps up her morning show duties, she heads to her wedding-planning business. There, just in case, there's a loveseat.

"Once every couple of weeks, I'll just kind of break down and catch a couple of Zs," she said.

Becky Surles, 34, who leads a team of cardiovascular specialists in the 24-hour catheterization lab at WakeMed's Raleigh hospital, builds napping and good sleep into her schedule.

Surles works from 6:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, so she tries to go to bed early Thursday night. Then she'll try to get a baby sitter for her three young children Friday afternoon so she can catch a two- to three-hour nap.

"It's easy for me to take a nap in the afternoon and feel really good at night," she said.

Change your scenery.

When someone having a heart attack arrives, Surles said, "we get really alert really quick."

But she doesn't deal only with emergencies. There's also paperwork and stocking to do.

When Surles is on duty but not handling an emergency, she might do paperwork for an hour or so, then switch to stocking for a change of pace, she said.

When it's break time, she gets out. She might go outside or head to another part of the hospital.

"Just walk," she said. "Get out of the department. ... It's really helpful."

Keep busy.

Two or three days a week, Joni Libby, 21, assistant manager at Stone Wolf Coffee in North Raleigh, has to be up early enough to make sure others get their first caffeine jolt. When she opens the coffee shop, she gets up by 4:45 a.m. and starts working by 6.

Libby admits that sometimes she complains about being sleepy, but she fights off yawns by keeping busy and making lists. Mental and operating lists at the shop help her keep in mind the next thing she needs to tackle. That way, she said, she doesn't get caught without something to do.