When I was a young pup, I was so excited about work and felt ready to work everyone under the table!
Getting up at 5:00 am and working into the evening was exciting and I was on my way up the corporate ladder.
So the corporate version of the arms race took off.
I wanted to be in the office before anyone else, leave after everyone else and be the shining star.
What a plan!
Until everything came crashing down!
I forgot one important ingredient – my human body.
It sounds all noble to be a worker that goes around the clock without a break but very few people can do it.
For a few months it was a great plan and then it started to fall apart.
I found my self slowing down during the day, even the simplest tasks became hard.
Meetings became a very arduous task and I started to stop understanding even simple technical items.
Like a ding ding, I didn’t read the signals from my body.
My body was falling apart and I was not understanding what was happening.
The work and home life was taking an incredible number of hours per day and the only variable I had was to cut my sleep.
I started sleeping fewer and fewer hours. Soon I was down to 3-4 hours of sleep a night and the wheels were starting to come off the train.
My body was shutting down and there was not enough caffeine in the world to solve this problem.
For many people, lack of sleep is an incredible problem.
We are living in a culture of zombies. Many of us are short of sleep and some are incredibly short of sleep
Some fall asleep at traffic lights.
According to Gallup, 40% of Americans don’t get enough sleep. We are now getting an average of 6.8 hours of sleep which is an hour less than we used to get on average not too many years ago.
Experts say we need up to 9 hours of sleep each night just to maintain our bodies and mind.
Albert Einstein got over 10 of sleep a night and he also had daytime naps.
So…if you want to be a genius, get much more sleep.
I took note of this got a little more sleep but didn’t really do a good job of getting a full quantity of sleep until a few years ago.
Finally, I got tired of being tired and decided to get the proper sleep and the change was tremendous.
I found I need a minimum of 7 hours and 8+ hours are very beneficial.
The medical world is in basic agreement that lack of sleep impacts a person by:
- Impairing ability to process information
- Destroys creativity
- Send stress levels sky high
- Higher chance of heart attack, diabetes, and stroke
- Obesity is a higher potential
- Lower ability to handle business problems
Heard enough?
I challenge you
Take the challenge getting outrageous amounts of sleep for 2 months.
Rearrange your schedule to get 8-9 hours a sleep at night for 2 months and see what happens!
It will be hard at first but you will get used to it.
You will be amazed what a difference it makes.
I would write more but I need to head to bed….zzzzzzzzz
