{"id":26253,"date":"2014-06-02T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T10:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/?p=26253"},"modified":"2014-06-02T05:00:55","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T10:00:55","slug":"sleep-longer-to-achieve-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/sleep-longer-to-achieve-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Why People Who Sleep Longer Achieve More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our society puts a high value on achievement but not much on rest. I hear people brag about how much they work and play but never how much they sleep\u2014usually the opposite. But what if sleep could help you achieve more?<\/p>\n\n

My team and I just finished launching the Get Noticed! Theme for WordPress<\/a>, and I am fried. We were down late and up early, day after day. Late-night emergencies and early-morning crises were the norm.
\n
\nMy team managed it well, and\u2014thanks to you\u2014it was a successful launch. But I didn\u2019t sleep well for a few weeks there. Maybe you can identify. We just don\u2019t get enough sleep, do we?<\/p>\n

The Sleep Deficit<\/h3>\n

In our high-risk, high-reward economy, there\u2019s a healthy pressure to do more with less. It makes sense with time and money. But it\u2019s a productivity killer when it comes to sleep.<\/p>\n

Experts say we need about eight hours a night. But the national average<\/a> is about 6.8. I got a lot fewer hours than that for several nights during the launch.<\/p>\n

And the truth is the real average might even be lower. We usually report how much time we spend in bed, not how much time we actually sleep. It turns out<\/a> we only get about 80 percent as much sleep as we think.<\/p>\n

Why aren\u2019t we getting enough sleep?<\/p>\n

The Myth of Sleepless Productivity<\/h3>\n

Maybe it came too easy for us in college or we\u2019ve watched too many movies, but it\u2019s easy to think that one hour of lost sleep is equal to one hour of bonus productivity. I\u2019m afraid it doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve discovered by painful and groggy, first-hand experience that sixty minutes of one does not equal sixty minute of the other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that we don\u2019t face emergencies and need to give up sleep every now and then. But our lack of sleep isn\u2019t usually about emergencies. For instance, how many product launches have I done this year compared with how many hours of lost sleep? Not enough to explain my sleep deficit.<\/p>\n

We act like sleep is a luxury or an indulgence; as a result, sacrificing sleep in the name of productivity has become routine.<\/p>\n

But the opposite\u2019s true. Cheating our sleep is like maxing our credit cards. There\u2019s a benefit now\u2014at least, it feels like it\u2014but the bill always comes due in the form of decreased health and mental ability.<\/p>\n

No one would choose to be sick and stupid, but depriving our bodies of sleep is the same thing. Robbing our sleep is robbing our productivity.<\/p>\n

Four Crucial Ways Sleep Helps Us Achieve More<\/h3>\n

There are several ways sleeping more at night can help us accomplish more during the day:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sleep keeps us sharp<\/strong>. How many times have you gone blank in a meeting, nodded at your desk, or forgot where you were going? It\u2019s happened to me more than I\u2019d like to admit. Skimping on sleep\u2014even a little\u2014can dramatically impair our mental performance, creating fatigue, inability to focus, slow reaction times, and more.\n

    Did you know that in one study<\/a> test subjects going on six hours of sleep a night for two weeks functioned at the same level of impairment as someone legally drunk? But those who got eight hours demonstrated no impairment at all.<\/li>\n

  2. Sleep improves our ability to remember, learn, and grow<\/strong>. I\u2019m sure brain teasers are fine, but adequate sleep is the best learning tool there is.\n

    Our minds are particularly active<\/a> when we sleep, integrating new information learned during the day, processing memories, and sorting the significant from all the meaningless stuff we pick up. Even dreaming is critical to this process. <\/p>\n

    If our work depends on our creativity<\/a> and insight\u2014and whose doesn\u2019t?\u2014then sleep is essential.<\/li>\n

  3. Sleep refreshes our emotional state<\/strong>. I\u2019ve mentioned before<\/a> a time I felt really discouraged after a lot of travel. When I told Gail, she suggested weariness was the real culprit.\n

    Nothing can make us feel depressed, moody, and irritable like missing sleep. Here\u2019s the good news: Getting enough sleep is like hitting the reset button.<\/p>\n

    In his book Eat Move Sleep<\/a><\/em>, Tom Rath explains that sleep reduces stress chemicals in the brain and dials back the part of the brain that processes emotions. The result is that we can start fresh if we invest in our sleep. <\/p>\n

  4. Sleep revitalizes our bodies<\/strong>. We all have a body clock. When we ignore its signals to play longer or work more, we create unnecessary stress, and that stress contributes to depression, fatigue, weight gain, high blood pressure, and a lot worse.\n

    But sleep lowers the stress chemicals in our bodies, boosts our immune system, and improves our bodies\u2019 metabolism. Instead of waking unrested after putting in extra hours on a project, why not wake approach it recharged the next day? You\u2019ll do better work and feel better about it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Bottom line: Instead of thinking of sleep as self-indulgence, we need to think of it as self-improvement.<\/p>\n

    There\u2019s nothing wrong with doing more with less, but if we\u2019re not smart about it, we can really hurt our productivity and even our health. It hardly matters what the short term gains are if we try making that our norm.<\/p>\n

    If we want to get ahead, we need to go to bed.<\/p>\n

    How do you feel when you get a full night\u2019s sleep several days in a row? What happens to your productivity if you try to skimp on sleep for a week or more?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Our society puts a high value on achievement but not much on rest. I hear people brag about how much they work and play but never how much they sleep\u2014usually the opposite. But what if sleep could help you achieve more? My team and I just finished launching the Get Noticed! Theme for WordPress, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[272,1068,1069,76,105],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy People Who Sleep Longer Achieve More<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People often mistakenly think they can be more productive by getting less sleep. This is a false economy. If you want to get more done, you need to sleep more. Here\u2019s why.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/sleep-longer-to-achieve-more\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why People Who Sleep Longer Achieve More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"People often mistakenly think they can be more productive by getting less sleep. This is a false economy. If you want to get more done, you need to sleep more. 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