Getting Enough Sleep But Still Tired? Your Workday Could Be To Blame
When people feel exhausted, the first thing they usually blame is sleep duration. Maybe you stayed up too late scrolling, squeezed in one more episode, or woke up earlier than planned. It seems like the obvious explanation. After all, if you're tired, you probably just need more sleep.
But that isn't always the case.
Many people regularly spend seven or even eight hours in bed and still wake up feeling anything but rested. That's because sleep isn't just about how long you sleep. It's also about how often your sleep gets interrupted throughout the night, even if you don't remember waking up.
A new study1 suggests those disruptions may be far more common than we realize among adults over 50. Perhaps even more interesting, researchers found that what happens during the workday may play a bigger role in those restless nights than many people expect.
Uncovering hidden sleep problems in healthy adults
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh followed 45 working adults between the ages of 50 and 66 for an entire year. None had a diagnosed sleep disorder.
Throughout the study, participants completed nearly 2,000 questionnaires about their sleep, well-being, work-life balance, job stress, and workplace experiences. They also wore wrist-based activity trackers that collected more than 5,200 days of objective sleep data. Researchers then used artificial intelligence to identify which factors were most closely linked to sleep quality and overall well-being.
The first surprise was just how common sleep problems were. Nearly 70% of participants experienced persistent, clinically significant sleep disturbances over the course of the study. Even more striking, 92% met the threshold for a sleep disorder at least once during the year, despite having no previous diagnosis.
The wearable data also challenged one of the biggest assumptions about sleep. Most participants averaged between 6.5 and 8 hours of sleep per night, but many still experienced frequent awakenings and fragmented sleep. Rather than sleeping too little, they often weren't sleeping continuously enough to feel restored.
Work stress may be showing up long after you leave the office
The AI analysis pointed to something many people have probably experienced firsthand.
Work-related stress consistently emerged as one of the strongest predictors of poor sleep and lower overall well-being. Participants who reported feeling tense, irritated, gloomy, or overwhelmed at work also tended to report poorer sleep. Meanwhile, those with better work-life balance and higher job satisfaction generally reported better well-being.
The researchers believe this creates a cycle. A stressful workday can make it harder to stay asleep through the night. Poor sleep then leaves you with less energy, more irritability, and a lower capacity to handle stress the next day. Over weeks and months, that pattern can reinforce itself.
What's particularly interesting is that the sleep problems weren't simply explained by late bedtimes or poor sleep habits. The researchers noted that many participants followed fairly regular sleep schedules. The bigger issue was how often their sleep became fragmented overnight.
Getting enough sleep but still feel exhausted?
This study doesn't mean work is the only reason people wake up tired. Sleep after 50 can also be influenced by hormones, medications, chronic pain, sleep apnea, and many other health conditions that weren't the focus of this research.
This was a relatively small study of 45 workers, so the findings need to be confirmed in larger, more diverse groups. Still, there's a practical takeaway here.
If you're consistently sleeping seven or eight hours but rarely wake up refreshed, it may be worth looking beyond your bedtime routine. Your stress levels throughout the day, your ability to mentally disconnect from work, and your overall work-life balance could be influencing your sleep more than an extra 30 minutes in bed.
That doesn't mean quitting your job or eliminating stress altogether. It might mean building small transitions between work and home, taking regular movement breaks during the day, limiting late-night work, or creating an evening routine that gives your brain time to shift out of work mode before your head hits the pillow.
The takeaway
We often think of better sleep as buying blackout curtains, taking magnesium, or putting our phones away earlier. Those habits can absolutely help. But this research suggests your sleep may also be shaped by the meetings you sat through, the stress you carried home, and whether work left enough room for the rest of your life.
So, if you're looking for better sleep, don't just look at your nighttime routine. Take a look at your daytime one, too.
