January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year’s resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
But a more important question may involve a resolution that so many of us fail to make. It involves a commodity that nearly everybody needs more of, and our failure to address it arguably has as much impact on our well-being as inadequate exercise and unhealthy eating.
The problem is very simple: Many of us need more sleep.
Here’s an alarming statistic: