Sleeping with Your Smartphone

Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow spent years embedded with Boston Consulting Group teams across thirty countries to test one counterintuitive idea: scheduled, predictable time off from devices actually makes teams faster and more satisfied, not slower. The research is rigorous and the conclusion is practical — the problem is broken collective habits, not individual willpower, and fixing it requires team-level agreements. The frameworks she offers are genuinely actionable for managers willing to lead the experiment. The main limitation is that BCG is an elite consulting context, and readers in manufacturing, healthcare, or small business will need to do some translation work. The 2012 publication date also shows in a few technology references, but the core argument has aged well.