Sleep is the Secret Sauce
I had been trying to write this post for awhile now, but I seem to keep dozing off... well good thing this is a deeper dive into some things I’ve learned about the sleep.
Sleep is always one of those things that gets pushed to the back burner of priorities. It’s usually because sleep isn't actively productive, nor do we think of it as a leisure activity. We tend to favour finishing a project, cramming for a test, or we even put it off to finish that latest Netflix binge series. Of course all of these are fine once in a while, but now that I’ve been able to step away from a life of over-scheduled activities and exhaustion, I realize how important sleep is to not just health, but achieving high performance.
Matthew Walker wrote “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams” back in 2017 and the lessons are still just as relevant if not more so today. I’ve heard him on a few podcasts and picked up his book recently to see if I can pull out some important themes.
"Human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain," Walker says.
The Nature of Sleep
The shorter your sleep — the shorter your life.
Whoa, how’s that for an opening salvo? While you sleep, your body is actually healing itself. Pretty simple. So if you cut that short, the less you heal, the less you live. When it’s boiled down to the fundamentals, this makes complete sense!
The actual processes going on during sleep are quite fascinating. Your body’s nighttime routine goes through 90-minute cycles that include 4 distinct phases of sleep. Everyone’s heard of REM sleep and as a result many think it’s the most important phase to ensure a restful night’s sleep. Sleep researchers such as Walker suggests that this is misleading. In fact all phases are just as important and each one is just as critical to resting and healing our bodies.
As a general rule of thumb, most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep a night, but this varies based on a whole host of variables. How do you know you’re getting enough sleep? It’s quite simple — if you’re waking up naturally without an alarm and without the need for medication for both your wake and sleep cycles (yes, including extreme amounts of caffeine to get you going or sleep supplements to get you down at night) then you’re getting enough sleep. That’s sobering — I’m not sure I've gone through any long stretches in my own life where I didn't wake up to an alarm clock. I feel like there’s a new personal OKR here to try to incorporate into my daily practice.
Sleep Leads to Peak Performance
To really achieve peak performance, you really need to start at consistently getting amazing sleep. It’s really a non-negotiable and the evidence is clear as some of the world’s top performing people in their respective fields ensure sleep is optimized in their daily routing. Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world after building Amazon into a hugely successful enterprise, ensures he has a solid 8 hours of sleep every night. Lebron James gets upwards of 12 hours of a sleep every night! The NBA MVP’s teammates joke that he is either playing basketball or sleeping — and they’re not kidding! Other world beaters are part of the quality sleep club: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Shopify founder Tobi Lutke, Microsoft founder Bill Gates to name a few.
Seems like a great club to get into — and the annual dues are basically free if we just retool our schedules to optimize for sleep!
A lot of us are able to “get by” on less and we might even convince ourselves that we can thrive on very little sleep. However Walker warns us that something indeed suffers even if we’re able to make it through the day: depending on which cycle of sleep we’re losing out on and how much we’re missing, we may experience loss of focus, memory impairment, immune system weakening, and may lead to a whole host of physical impairments. In fact, Walker says every major disease has significant links back to a lack of sleep.
Go Get Your Z’s
If you’re convinced that you need to start optimizing for sleep, Walker has a few suggestions:
ensure your bedroom is optimized for sleep — try not to pack too many associations with your rest area such as doubling as an office or exercise space
try to stay aligned with the natural cycle of the day — get lots of sun during the day and try to limit screen time before bed as they give off blue light which deceives your body into delaying it’s night time response
avoid caffeine and alcohol as much as possible! at a minimum consume sparingly and earlier in the day
sleep debt cannot be banked easily, so be consistent — don’t think that sleeping in the day after is going to make up for an all-nighter
I know I’ve rarely prioritized sleep in the past, and since having kids my sleep patterns have likely gotten worse. And it’s probably a major factor in leading to burnout — my body was simply not getting into enough quality recovery cycles to set me up for resilience.
Since I’ve stepped away from a rigid corporate schedule, my sleep has improved significantly and I can feel the difference in my mood, my energy, and my general health. But I know I can still do better and it’d be amazing if I could apply all of Matthew Walker’s learnings to prioritize my sleep. I’ll be sure to share future sleep habit improvements and any hacks I figure out along the way!
Inspiration:
Matthew Walker on:
