Sleep as a competitive advantage

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Very often, when we have urgent things to do, we steal the time to complete them from our "sleepy" watch, naively believing that as a result we will win. However, the author of this article is convinced that only full sleep (and not its absence) will help us successfully cope with the tasks set.

We all know from childhood about the benefits of sleep. But, becoming adults, for some reason we forget this simple truth and begin to imprudently neglect it. We invite you to read the story of Tony Schwartz, American journalist and writer, founder and CEO of The Energy Project, who is convinced that proper sleep provides significant benefits.

At 6 pm last Friday, I boarded a plane to Bangalore (a major city in India). On Tuesday, I returned to New York after several days of business meetings and 34 hours of travel across nine time zones.

I do not wish so many business trips to anyone, including myself. However, there was one advantage: I experienced virtually no inconvenience with jet lag - my biorhythms were fine. Unlike many of the executives I met in India, they were clearly running out after their long flights and I guess they were even more exhausted by the time they got home.

The paradox is that I need to spend more hours sleeping than the average person. But because I’m so addicted to sleep, I’ve learned to fall asleep almost anywhere, anytime. As a result, I rarely feel tired and exhausted, although my life, consisting of constant business trips, requires a lot of physical and psychological costs from me.

For example, on the way to India, I slept for nine hours and exactly the same amount on the way home. I have two ways to help me fall asleep:

1. Write down all the thoughts that are spinning in your head (this way you free yourself from daytime thoughts, nothing else gnaws at you, and you can safely fall asleep).
2. Take a deep breath (this is necessary in order to saturate the hungry brain with oxygen) and start counting from one to to (and here each has its own number, I usually go to six).

My circadian rhythms are clearly a challenge to travel to India. I spent two days in Bangalore: if I felt that I was falling asleep, I just went to my room and dozed for several hours. When I flew back to New York at noon on Tuesday, I felt great and spent the rest of the day at work.

Most of the executives I have spoken with in India sleep very little. Moreover, they consider it their advantage, for them it is something like a test of strength. Remember how the vocalist of the famous band postulated?

I will live as long as I live. I will sleep when I die.

Bon Jovi

Here's my version: "As long as I'm alive, I'm going to prosper, so I'll sleep well."

Many of us continue to believe in the myth that if we get an hour less sleep, we will spend that hour with the greatest benefit. In fact, every hour "stolen" from sleep not only makes us feel tired, but also has a detrimental effect on everything we do. The fewer hours we spend on sleep, the more distracted, inattentive we are, we cannot focus on the tasks at hand, and our efficiency decreases.

Research shows that most of us need seven to eight hours of sleep to feel refreshed throughout the day, and only a small percentage of people need less than seven hours of sleep to get adequate rest. As the researchers note, people who do not get enough sleep cannot even imagine the damage they cause to their own body. Most of them have forgotten how it is to feel slept.

I am convinced that eight hours of sleep is the key to our high productivity. The more tasks you are given at work, the more time you need to sleep and rest. Instead, most of us do exactly the opposite: the more work we have, the less time we sleep, naively believing that we will get more done this way.

A study was conducted at Stanford University. The Stanford basketball team was asked to sleep 10 hours a night for seven weeks. Almost at the beginning of the experiment, team members noted that they get enough sleep, feel a surge of vitality and a good mood throughout the day. The coach of the team noticed that the success of his players in sports has also increased significantly.

Throughout my life, I sleep eight hours a day. Sometimes this figure rises to eight and a half or nine hours, depending on how many urgent things I have at work.

Adequate sleep is beneficial not only in your professional life, but also in your personal life, and it is also invaluable for your health. Prioritize correctly.