One of the big controllable factors that will determine the state of your mind and body in the years to come is your sleep.
Evolutionarily speaking, our natural rhythm is a long sleep at night and a short midday nap (yes). Sleep is not so much for the body as for the brain to organize itself and carry out numerous important functions in a kind of offline processing mode.
Many people lead their lives in a way that they carry a massive ‘sleep debt’ which manifests in more visible problems as they age. ‘Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning ability, general math knowledge,’ notes John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist.
On sleep, it’s pretty straightforward: between not eating anything and not being allowed to sleep, it’s the latter that will kill you first. One of the vestiges of the industrial revolution is the eight-hour workday—twenty-four hours divided into three shifts. You work for eight, you sleep for eight, and rest is for your other chores and to keep the show going.
But today, both eight hours of work and eight hours of sleep have become exceptions. Travelling to work and working takes way more than eight hours a day, and I don’t have to cite research to buttress this point. You experience it, daily.
It’s important to prioritize your sleep over almost anything else. Jeff Bezos is very particular about sleeping for eight hours and he claims that it makes him feel better and think better. He opines that it’s prudent to make three good decisions a day rather than a hundred low-quality decisions and that sleep deprivation severely impairs decision-making.
Even Elon Musk, who is known for his all-nighters and sleeping under his desk to maximize productivity, has learned the hard way to squeeze in at least six hours of daily sleep.
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During my engineering days, I would always make it a point to sleep eight to nine solid hours before every exam. Studying all through the year and, more importantly, making copious notes, helped me develop a decent understanding of concepts and practice.
I would revise my notes, have a light dinner, take a stroll, and then go straight to bed. Back then, I wasn’t aware of the science behind how sleep impacted creativity, but my results were aligned. The result: I would be less stressed before and during the exams.
But when I landed at NITIE Mumbai, things changed dramatically. Hostel life caught on to me. I got involved in so many event teams and office committees that late-night meetings and study groups became a norm, and I could barely manage to sleep for more than six hours on most nights. My studies suffered.
But all of this came with a fantastic side effect—I became a good public speaker. I was the first choice for the induction programmes for incoming batches and most other affairs. The same happened years later at IIM Bangalore during my PhD programme where every time I did a night- out to write an assignment or churn out a term paper, I did poorly. So, my experience has been that cutting down on sleep has never helped me.
Even midday power naps for about twenty to thirty minutes can go a long way in helping boost productivity. If your brain at 3 p.m. isn’t helping you concentrate, don’t kill the urge with a coffee or a smoke; just put your head down on the desk and take a nap. While writing this book, I have been mostly at home.
No travels, hardly any workshops, just reading and writing. And twenty minutes of afternoon naps have gone a long way in taking me through the day, for writing is intellectually very demanding. Even for the less demanding ones, don’t resort to a coffee.
Here’s an interesting finding from the research carried out at NASA: Pilots who slept in the cockpit for twenty-six minutes showed alertness improvements of up to 54 per cent and job- performance improvements by 34 per cent, compared to pilots who didn’t nap. Even as some of the most hard- working people in the world, the Japanese put a premium on power naps.
They have a word for it—inemuri—which roughly means ‘sleep while being present’. Afternoon naps at subways, coffee shops, canteens, offices and most public places are legitimate in Japan, and that’s perhaps one of the secrets of their superior productivity, problem-solving skills and life expectancy. Google has Nap Pods and Microsoft has Tree Houses at their offices that give a thumbs up to power naps, and they see benefits in well-rested employees.
A well-rested mind can do wonders. Alas, we have little problem finding ways to keep our minds busy, which is literally struggling to get a break from the incessant stream of junk (we call entertainment).
So, how to improve the quality of your sleep? Three practices that have served me well: 1) read at least ten pages of something, anything in physical format, before going to bed; 2) always sleep in the dark and invest in a good quality mattress; and 3) keep your phone away from your bed. If need be, buy an alarm clock. That’s cheap compared to the assault of your phone.
This excerpt from ‘Design Your Career: Lead Self, Lead Others, Lead Change’ by Pavan Soni has been published with permission from Penguin Random House India.