"Prioritize sleep to avoid a 40% memory deficit Sleep researcher Matt Walker conducted experiments comparing sleep-deprived individuals to those who got a full eight hours, finding a dramatic gap in memory formation. Walker explains that sleep deprivation effectively "shut down your memory inbox" so that "any new incoming files they were just being bounced" — meaning new experiences simply could not be committed to memory. He quantifies this as a "quite significant 40 percent deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep," a gap he says could be "the difference in a child acing an exam versus failing it miserably." Anyone who deprioritizes sleep before learning, studying, or skill-building is operating at a severe cognitive disadvantage that no amount of effort can fully compensate for. Source: Matt Walker, TED, Sleep is your superpower"