Tokenistic and self-defeating by nature, they’re regurgitated in a post-Christmas purge while our brains are still buzzing with the guilt of festive excess. 

Why this thunderbolt of clarity, this sudden crystallisation of every stain on our character, arrives at the same time every year is a mystery. 

But, despite the fact few of us manage to keep them, there’s still something strangely soothing in the annual resolution.

Popular resolutions run the gamut – weight loss, travel, breaking a damaging habit, spending more time with loved ones and so many more.

Seldom do people make a resolution to simply get more sleep.

And yet a lack of sleep can have such profound impacts on other parts of your life – your productivity at work, your caffeine addiction, your relationship with family. 

New research has revealed the majority of us start the day feeling as flat as a pancake and finish it only slightly more inflated. 

The reason: not enough shut eye.

Just one in 10 Aussies surveyed always feel rested and relaxed in the morning. 

There’s a bleak irony in the fact we live in an age where we can access Facebook on our phones and buy 38 different flavours of Tic Tacs, but we can’t master something as fundamental as sleep.

This national sleep debt doesn’t just gnaw away at our quality of life, but it can actually endanger lives.

A sleep-deprived motorist is two to three times more likely to be involved in a car accident.

Research shows that 24 hours without sleep, or a week of sleeping just four to five hours a night, has a similar effect to a blood alcohol level of 0.1 per cent.

The major cause of the sleep crisis is, not surprisingly, stress. 

In our mad clamber to be the perfect employee, parent and partner, we rob ourselves of time and the thing that provides the energy to function – sleep. 

We’ve become a nation of sleep-deprived zombies and we’re lesser people for it. 

But there is something you can do to change that.

As you head back to work for another frantic year, readjust your new year’s resolutions to include making more time to “recharge your batteries”. 

Your body – and your loved ones – will thank you for it.