How Much Sleep Are You Getting?

A young friend of mine brags about how little sleep he gets (five hours).  I remember a time when I boasted about regularly going to bed after midnight and waking up at six; I thought I was getting a lot more done in my day and that this was proof of my commitment to my business and my growing family.

But this idea about working more hours and sleeping less represents a significant mental obstacle to success; if you think success is achieved merely by working more hours, you’re stuck in a wage slave mentality.  The wage slave exchanges his time for federal reserve notes and concludes that more hours=more money.  That’s true in the short-term, but it’s limiting, both because you’re unlikely to make significant positive changes and because you only have so many hours to ‘sell’.

True wealth and success are rarely achieved by guys who run faster on the hamster wheel.  Solving big problems for people quickly comes through the application of your intellect, often layered with outstanding collaboration with others.  It’s creativity and problem solving, not necessarily long hours, that creates lifestyle-changing, business-saving solutions.  It’s working effectively with others and inspiring them to do greater things that produces exceptional outcomes.

True, if you’re just turning a knob at a factory or walking in circles around a mall or driving for Uber you don’t need to operate at your best and highest purpose, but the odds are if that’s your current situation and you’re reading this, you’re not happy with the status quo.

If you look at the most successful businessmen in the world, they did not create the wealth they have by working many more hours than others, or by charging more per hour than anyone else, but by creating more value for more people more quickly.  Anecdotally, the rich people I know value their health more than almost anything else.  What does that tell you?

Physicians and sleep experts say most people need between seven and eight hours of sleep.  If you’re sick or injured, you might need more.  If you’re old, you might need less (although a lot of old people sleep less at night because they don’t sleep well, and then are often napping later in the day in what is known as polyphasic sleeping).  If you can’t sleep for eight hours at night, or have reasons that prevent this, then taking a nap is exactly the thing to do so that your total sleep time gets to that magic number.

Consistently getting less sleep than the ideal deprives your brain of the critical rest and restoration process you need.  You might think that by cheating yourself of one or two hours that you’re getting more done, but the odds are that you are not performing at your peak and that you’re actually swapping high value sleep time for low productivity waking time.

There are some true mutants who can perform at a high level for long periods of time with less.  However, the most successful athletes in the world have discovered a direct correlation between more sleep (sometimes as much as 12 hours!), and higher performance levels. These men and women value outcomes more than anything else and through trial and error they’ve determined what the most important factors are.  You can benefit from their expense and experience without going through all the same diagnostics.

We all need to sleep less on occasion, when our duties demand it, but if you are really worried about serving others well and doing great things, focus on quality activity and not quantity.  Structure your diet, exercise, sleep patterns and life choices around performing at your best and highest level and not simply maximizing the number of hours you’re awake.