[0:00] Welcome back to Mental Performance Unleashed with Emily Heird.
[0:05] Emily is a licensed psychotherapist and certified mental performance mastery coach
[0:12] who helps attorneys and legal leaders operate like intellectual athletes,
[0:18] performing at a high level while protecting their mental energy.
[0:22] I'm Leigh Ann Lyon, and in today's episode, we're talking about sleep and high performance.
[0:28] For many attorneys and leaders, poor sleep isn't just about long hours.
[0:34] It's a performance issue that affects decision-making, focus, and recovery.
[0:40] Emily will break down why high performers often struggle with sleep,
[0:45] what's happening mean cognitively and physiologically, and how better sleep becomes a critical part
[0:51] of sustainable performance. Hello Emily, nice to see you.
[0:55] Hi Leigh Ann, it's great to see you as well. So you work with high performers every day,
[1:01] lawyers, executives, leaders that are under constant pressure. How common is sleep dysfunction
[1:08] in this population, and what does it actually look like when it shows up? Yeah, so sleep dysfunction
[1:14] in this population is extremely common, but high performers when they come to me, they don't come to
[1:21] me saying I have a sleep problem. They talk about lack of focus, it's off, their decision-making is
[1:28] slower, they're more irritable with their team. There are other things going on that they're paying
[1:33] more attention to, but inevitably in that first conversation I have with them when I ask about
[1:40] their sleep and the quality of it, how it's impacted, almost always sleep is part of the picture.
[1:47] They just haven't connected the dots yet between sleep and their performance, and it often shows up,
[1:54] like waking up at two or three a.m. in the morning, worrying about things,
[1:58] ruminating, waking up feeling unrefreshed, relying on caffeine, caffeine, and more caffeine to
[2:05] sustain function. And sometimes they wonder if they have an anxiety disorder or ADHD, or they often
[2:12] just rationalize and justify as being part of a busy person. But we know there is a culture in
[2:19] high-performance professions law, especially, where functioning on five hours of sleep is worn more
[2:24] like a badge of honor than anything else. What does the research actually tell us about what's
[2:30] happening to cognitive performance at that level of sleep deprivation? Yeah, so certainly in law,
[2:38] in some other professions that I work with, you know, there's kind of that unspoken equation of
[2:44] hours awake equals commitment. Working late into the evening, sacrificing sleep is a signal that you
[2:52] are committed to doing your work. And sleep can almost feel irresponsible when you're billing,
[2:58] when you have a trial coming up, when your clients need you. So again, they don't just tolerate it,
[3:03] they rationalize it as part of the job. But what's happening is like your body never acclimates
[3:11] and adjusts to that sleep deprivation. It just kind of stops sending the signal as loudly.
[3:18] So they people forget what feeling rested feels like. And there's a lot of sleep research out there
[3:26] that shows, you know, 17 to 19 hours with sleep. So this is the average attorney who's pulled an
[3:32] all-nighter and is working into the second day that produces cognitive impairment equivalent to 0.05
[3:38] blood alcohol level. So decision-making, working memory, emotional, emotional regulation are all
[3:46] measurably degraded. And chronically sleep deprived people lose the ability to kind of accurately
[3:54] assess their own level of impairment or how much it's impacting them. They say they feel fine,
[4:02] they're presenting as though they feel fine, but they're not fine. So it's all related to
[4:09] cognitive performance, the very things that attorneys need and executives need to perform their
[4:15] best at work are impacted by lack of sleep over a consistent period of time. Obviously,
[4:24] you know, there are times when work calls for working late into the evening or preparing for trial
[4:29] or getting a deal over the line. But if this is your norm and you're chronically sleep deprived,
[4:35] it's going to impact all those things that I mentioned in terms of cognitive performance.
[4:40] It impacts mood and emotional regulation, those erode, and then you have a higher level of vulnerability
[4:47] to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression because there is a strong bi-directional
[4:54] relationship between sleep and these mental health challenges. So I think most people by now have read
[5:01] the basic sleep tips, you know, for better sleep. No screens before bed and keep a consistent schedule.
[5:10] But what if people have tried that and it doesn't seem to make an impact? What's happening
[5:15] in a beneath the surface that the sleep hygiene tips don't fix?
[5:20] Yeah, so those tips aren't wrong. They're just kind of downstream of what I see is the real problem,
[5:27] the root problems. So yeah, limiting screens, getting on a consistent sleep wait time, a dark room,
[5:34] all of those are valid. If you Google sleep tips, you're going to come up with millions of results
[5:39] because we're a chronically sleep deprived society. But if your nervous system is still running on a
[5:46] stress response, no amount of blackout curtains is going to fix that. A new mattress isn't going to fix it.
[5:53] You cannot kind of sleep hygiene your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. So we have to start
[6:00] treating sleep as not as the problem, but as a signal. And the question is, is like, what is my
[6:07] system trying to tell me about the load that it's carrying and the lack of recovery? So you just
[6:15] mentioned the nervous system as the foundation of performance. How does chronic stress, the kind
[6:21] that accumulates in high stakes professions, actually interfere with the brain's ability to enter
[6:28] and sustain a quality sleep? Yeah. So chronic stress actively interferes with the exact physiological
[6:36] conditions that we need to enter into a sleep state, mostly that your nervous system has gone
[6:42] from that fight or flight mode to the rest and digest mode. Number one, and then number two,
[6:47] it really needs like a lack of effort. It needs us to slow down and to stop doing, which is challenging
[6:53] for high performers. So it's not just that you're like tired and wired. It's that, you know,
[6:58] your nervous system is preventing you from getting the thing that you need the most. And this is all
[7:04] related to our cortisol rhythm. We have naturally higher levels of cortisol in the morning when you wake
[7:10] up and then it's supposed to lower down at night to help you downshift. But when you're under chronic
[7:17] stress, that rhythm gets disregulated, gets disrupted and chronic stress or cortisol, excuse me,
[7:25] stays elevated in the evening. So it's kind of getting the wrong signal at the wrong time.
[7:31] And when I look at schedules, the schedules of my clients and high performers, they tend to have a
[7:36] chaotic schedule almost by definition, you know, late nights, early mornings, all nighters before trial,
[7:44] travel, irregular meals, lack of exercise. So all these things, the circadian rhythm gets,
[7:53] it doesn't get established. It's not where it needs to be so that you have a predictable bedtime
[8:01] and a predictable wake-up time. And the circadian rhythm depends on consistency. So if it doesn't
[8:06] have a consistent pattern because of the stress and the demands of work, then it is challenging for
[8:12] you to naturally be able to fall asleep more naturally. My clients often also have the challenge of
[8:20] when they do lay down and go to sleep. And there is no external stimulation or noise. And the brain
[8:26] has space, that's when it wants to think about cases, the unfinished task list, the conversation
[8:33] that they need to have tomorrow, the fear that you're missing something. So all those worries and all
[8:38] those fears start to pop in, which then makes it more challenging to sleep. So when I work on
[8:45] sleep issues with clients, yes, we tackle the good sleep hygiene tips, but we also focus more on the
[8:51] root issue, which is the cortisol and the chronic stress. Some curious, what's the difference between
[8:58] someone who sleeps eight hours, but wakes up unrefreshed versus someone who gets six hours and wakes
[9:05] up feeling sharp and ready to go? Is it about quantity, quality, or something else entirely?
[9:12] Yeah, so the research shows that quality is more important than quantity. So if someone gets eight
[9:18] hours of sleep, but it's been really disrupted, or they haven't gotten into that deeper levels,
[9:27] deeper stage of sleep, the REM stages, the they are going to wake up feeling less refreshed, whereas
[9:35] if you sleep deeply and well for six hours, then your body might have received all of the recharge
[9:42] and recovery time it needs for to wake up ready to go the next day. So certain things that can
[9:49] interfere in addition to the other things that I've mentioned, alcohol, late night eating, some
[9:56] medications, these are going to suppress REM sleep, even if the total number of hours feels fine,
[10:03] you're not going to get that quality sleep. And so if you are consistently getting what you think
[10:09] is enough sleep, but you're not waking up feeling refreshed, then this is a signal worth paying
[10:15] attention to, and you might want to get some data on your heart rate variability, your resting heart
[10:21] rate, or using a sleep tracker to start looking at patterns. Excellent points. In your work with clients,
[10:29] what is the most common hidden drivers of poor sleep that people don't necessarily connect to
[10:36] their sleep problems? Yes, so there are a number of them that I see on a pretty consistent basis.
[10:42] Number one is just like the state of the world in general right now. We're living in a highly volatile
[10:48] unpredictable chaotic time, and a lot of the fears and worries about what is going to happen, what could
[10:56] happen definitely keep people awake at night. Other contributors are like unfinished emotional loops,
[11:04] like conflicts that aren't resolved in your life, things that are left unsaid, ongoing relational
[11:10] tensions, whether that's in the workplace or your personal relationships. Perfectionism is a large
[11:17] hidden driver of poor sleep. This is the brain, it like stays running, keeping the loops open, trying
[11:25] to find the flaws or the risks or worrying about what other people are thinking about you.
[11:31] A sense of chronic urgency, so lawyers especially tend to operate on like this drive that everything
[11:40] is a five-alarm fire and everything is urgent. But when everything is always urgent, the nervous system
[11:48] never gets either the all-clear signal or it doesn't downshift into the the rest and digest state.
[11:57] So I also help my clients learn how to operate in the state of what I call like relaxed intensity.
[12:03] And then there's a lack of transition, you know, going from full work mode to bed immediately with no
[12:09] decompression buffer or even working in your bed. If you are on your laptop, if you're on your phone,
[12:15] responding to emails, whether that's first thing in the morning or late into the evening, your brain
[12:20] gets really confused about what am I supposed to do in this environment? Am I supposed to be working,
[12:25] thinking about problems or am I supposed to be sleeping? And then the last one is really the like the
[12:31] identity piece, that identity fusion with being productive. I always have to be productive. And so when
[12:39] people have an achievement-oriented identity, rest can feel like a failure which creates
[12:47] low-grade anxiety around not working. So those are some common hidden contributors that I see.
[12:55] I know you framed recovery as a performance protocol, not just rest. How does sleep fit into that
[13:04] larger system? And what does treating sleep like a cognitive athlete actually look like in practice?
[13:11] Yeah. So elite athletes do not treat recovery as the absence of training. It is training.
[13:20] So for athletes that physical adaptation of their muscles, the growth of muscles, the healing of
[13:26] muscles and tendons happens during recovery, not during the workout. And cognitive performance works
[13:35] the same way. So the consolidation of information and memories, the repair, the cleaning out of the
[13:42] toxins of the brain, emotional regulation, all of that happens during sleep. So when you skip it on a
[13:50] regular basis, you are not being productive. You are actually withdrawing and taking out withdrawals from
[13:56] your sleep bank and not making deposits into it. So you're running at a sleep deficit.
[14:02] So protocols, what this looks like in practice. Number one is like treating your sleep window as a
[14:08] non-negotiable appointment. This was one of the main things that I changed after I hit my wall with
[14:15] burnout and I was recovering from burnout was to stop staying up late, kind of that sleep procrastination,
[14:25] watching true crime on Netflix on my phone and bed and getting to sleep. So treating it like it's a
[14:32] non-negotiable appointment. It is part of your performance. Then building in that wind down protocol.
[14:39] There's a reason why we have a bedtime routine for kids. It helps their body know the signals
[14:46] that it's time to start to wind down and to be able to transition to sleep easier. We are no different
[14:52] as adults. So building in that wind down time 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. Stay off your
[14:59] phone. Now I will put a little asterisk besides this because sometimes I recommend to my clients that
[15:05] they do a like a non-sleep deep rest protocol or sort of guided mindfulness exercise to help
[15:12] transition their nervous system into the rest or digest state. But when I say stay off your phone,
[15:18] I mean no news, no scrolling, no information that is going to keep your brain alert and active.
[15:25] We think we're getting recovery when we're doing that but we're not. And then sometimes I ask my
[15:31] clients or they want to track sleep data, not for judgment, not to optimize it to the, you know,
[15:39] it's degree, but just to kind of get some baseline figures to work with and see what's actually happening
[15:44] as we start to make adjustments. And then, you know, like, again, integrating rest and recovery
[15:54] throughout your day so you're helping manage the cortisol levels throughout the day. Excellent,
[16:00] excellent ideas. So if somebody is listening to this and they recognize themselves,
[16:07] they're exhausted. They can't shut their brain off at night. They're performing below where they know
[16:12] they're capable. What is the first thing that you'd tell them to look at? Well, first is to stop
[16:20] kind of treating sleep as as the enemy, you know, oftentimes in these environments. Again,
[16:26] it's easy to justify sacrificing sleep in the name of getting work done and I have to get it done
[16:31] and I must get it done. And so sleep really isn't your enemy. It's actually going to be one of your
[16:38] best tools for improved performance. So the first thing is like making that mindset shift
[16:45] and start to get curious about it. You know, your sleep is giving you information.
[16:51] What do you notice? Is it that you can't shut your brain off at night? Are you worrying about not
[16:56] being able to fall asleep? You know, kind of the the worry about sleep actually interferes with
[17:01] our ability to sleep. Are you waking up at 2 a.m. having fears, ruminating, rehearsing tomorrow?
[17:12] These are all signals. So instead of just accepting that you don't sleep well, start to
[17:19] get curious and see what you notice about what is happening with your sleep patterns. And then if you
[17:25] were, if I would recommend one thing to start putting into practice, it would be to start building
[17:33] a bedtime transition and wind down. So looking at what happens between the end of the work day
[17:40] and when you go to bed, how are you spending that time and then deliberately choosing to
[17:46] create some sort of transition routine for yourself 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed,
[17:52] genuine decompression and give yourself permission to do that as part of your performance,
[18:01] your well-being, and your kind of base, like foundation for sustainable success.
[18:09] Well, that is it for today's episode of Mental Performance Unleashed with Emily Heird.
[18:16] To learn more about how Emily helps lawyers and legal leaders strengthen their mental performance,
[18:23] go to VantageViewCoaching.com. Take the free mental performance assessment, it takes about 10
[18:30] minutes and then book a call with Emily to walk through what it reveals about your performance
[18:38] and receive a personalized protocol to start implementing immediately. Remember to subscribe,
[18:45] leave a review, and share this episode with a colleague who could benefit from
[18:50] staying sharp under pressure. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Leigh-Anne.
[0:05] Emily is a licensed psychotherapist and certified mental performance mastery coach
[0:12] who helps attorneys and legal leaders operate like intellectual athletes,
[0:18] performing at a high level while protecting their mental energy.
[0:22] I'm Leigh Ann Lyon, and in today's episode, we're talking about sleep and high performance.
[0:28] For many attorneys and leaders, poor sleep isn't just about long hours.
[0:34] It's a performance issue that affects decision-making, focus, and recovery.
[0:40] Emily will break down why high performers often struggle with sleep,
[0:45] what's happening mean cognitively and physiologically, and how better sleep becomes a critical part
[0:51] of sustainable performance. Hello Emily, nice to see you.
[0:55] Hi Leigh Ann, it's great to see you as well. So you work with high performers every day,
[1:01] lawyers, executives, leaders that are under constant pressure. How common is sleep dysfunction
[1:08] in this population, and what does it actually look like when it shows up? Yeah, so sleep dysfunction
[1:14] in this population is extremely common, but high performers when they come to me, they don't come to
[1:21] me saying I have a sleep problem. They talk about lack of focus, it's off, their decision-making is
[1:28] slower, they're more irritable with their team. There are other things going on that they're paying
[1:33] more attention to, but inevitably in that first conversation I have with them when I ask about
[1:40] their sleep and the quality of it, how it's impacted, almost always sleep is part of the picture.
[1:47] They just haven't connected the dots yet between sleep and their performance, and it often shows up,
[1:54] like waking up at two or three a.m. in the morning, worrying about things,
[1:58] ruminating, waking up feeling unrefreshed, relying on caffeine, caffeine, and more caffeine to
[2:05] sustain function. And sometimes they wonder if they have an anxiety disorder or ADHD, or they often
[2:12] just rationalize and justify as being part of a busy person. But we know there is a culture in
[2:19] high-performance professions law, especially, where functioning on five hours of sleep is worn more
[2:24] like a badge of honor than anything else. What does the research actually tell us about what's
[2:30] happening to cognitive performance at that level of sleep deprivation? Yeah, so certainly in law,
[2:38] in some other professions that I work with, you know, there's kind of that unspoken equation of
[2:44] hours awake equals commitment. Working late into the evening, sacrificing sleep is a signal that you
[2:52] are committed to doing your work. And sleep can almost feel irresponsible when you're billing,
[2:58] when you have a trial coming up, when your clients need you. So again, they don't just tolerate it,
[3:03] they rationalize it as part of the job. But what's happening is like your body never acclimates
[3:11] and adjusts to that sleep deprivation. It just kind of stops sending the signal as loudly.
[3:18] So they people forget what feeling rested feels like. And there's a lot of sleep research out there
[3:26] that shows, you know, 17 to 19 hours with sleep. So this is the average attorney who's pulled an
[3:32] all-nighter and is working into the second day that produces cognitive impairment equivalent to 0.05
[3:38] blood alcohol level. So decision-making, working memory, emotional, emotional regulation are all
[3:46] measurably degraded. And chronically sleep deprived people lose the ability to kind of accurately
[3:54] assess their own level of impairment or how much it's impacting them. They say they feel fine,
[4:02] they're presenting as though they feel fine, but they're not fine. So it's all related to
[4:09] cognitive performance, the very things that attorneys need and executives need to perform their
[4:15] best at work are impacted by lack of sleep over a consistent period of time. Obviously,
[4:24] you know, there are times when work calls for working late into the evening or preparing for trial
[4:29] or getting a deal over the line. But if this is your norm and you're chronically sleep deprived,
[4:35] it's going to impact all those things that I mentioned in terms of cognitive performance.
[4:40] It impacts mood and emotional regulation, those erode, and then you have a higher level of vulnerability
[4:47] to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression because there is a strong bi-directional
[4:54] relationship between sleep and these mental health challenges. So I think most people by now have read
[5:01] the basic sleep tips, you know, for better sleep. No screens before bed and keep a consistent schedule.
[5:10] But what if people have tried that and it doesn't seem to make an impact? What's happening
[5:15] in a beneath the surface that the sleep hygiene tips don't fix?
[5:20] Yeah, so those tips aren't wrong. They're just kind of downstream of what I see is the real problem,
[5:27] the root problems. So yeah, limiting screens, getting on a consistent sleep wait time, a dark room,
[5:34] all of those are valid. If you Google sleep tips, you're going to come up with millions of results
[5:39] because we're a chronically sleep deprived society. But if your nervous system is still running on a
[5:46] stress response, no amount of blackout curtains is going to fix that. A new mattress isn't going to fix it.
[5:53] You cannot kind of sleep hygiene your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. So we have to start
[6:00] treating sleep as not as the problem, but as a signal. And the question is, is like, what is my
[6:07] system trying to tell me about the load that it's carrying and the lack of recovery? So you just
[6:15] mentioned the nervous system as the foundation of performance. How does chronic stress, the kind
[6:21] that accumulates in high stakes professions, actually interfere with the brain's ability to enter
[6:28] and sustain a quality sleep? Yeah. So chronic stress actively interferes with the exact physiological
[6:36] conditions that we need to enter into a sleep state, mostly that your nervous system has gone
[6:42] from that fight or flight mode to the rest and digest mode. Number one, and then number two,
[6:47] it really needs like a lack of effort. It needs us to slow down and to stop doing, which is challenging
[6:53] for high performers. So it's not just that you're like tired and wired. It's that, you know,
[6:58] your nervous system is preventing you from getting the thing that you need the most. And this is all
[7:04] related to our cortisol rhythm. We have naturally higher levels of cortisol in the morning when you wake
[7:10] up and then it's supposed to lower down at night to help you downshift. But when you're under chronic
[7:17] stress, that rhythm gets disregulated, gets disrupted and chronic stress or cortisol, excuse me,
[7:25] stays elevated in the evening. So it's kind of getting the wrong signal at the wrong time.
[7:31] And when I look at schedules, the schedules of my clients and high performers, they tend to have a
[7:36] chaotic schedule almost by definition, you know, late nights, early mornings, all nighters before trial,
[7:44] travel, irregular meals, lack of exercise. So all these things, the circadian rhythm gets,
[7:53] it doesn't get established. It's not where it needs to be so that you have a predictable bedtime
[8:01] and a predictable wake-up time. And the circadian rhythm depends on consistency. So if it doesn't
[8:06] have a consistent pattern because of the stress and the demands of work, then it is challenging for
[8:12] you to naturally be able to fall asleep more naturally. My clients often also have the challenge of
[8:20] when they do lay down and go to sleep. And there is no external stimulation or noise. And the brain
[8:26] has space, that's when it wants to think about cases, the unfinished task list, the conversation
[8:33] that they need to have tomorrow, the fear that you're missing something. So all those worries and all
[8:38] those fears start to pop in, which then makes it more challenging to sleep. So when I work on
[8:45] sleep issues with clients, yes, we tackle the good sleep hygiene tips, but we also focus more on the
[8:51] root issue, which is the cortisol and the chronic stress. Some curious, what's the difference between
[8:58] someone who sleeps eight hours, but wakes up unrefreshed versus someone who gets six hours and wakes
[9:05] up feeling sharp and ready to go? Is it about quantity, quality, or something else entirely?
[9:12] Yeah, so the research shows that quality is more important than quantity. So if someone gets eight
[9:18] hours of sleep, but it's been really disrupted, or they haven't gotten into that deeper levels,
[9:27] deeper stage of sleep, the REM stages, the they are going to wake up feeling less refreshed, whereas
[9:35] if you sleep deeply and well for six hours, then your body might have received all of the recharge
[9:42] and recovery time it needs for to wake up ready to go the next day. So certain things that can
[9:49] interfere in addition to the other things that I've mentioned, alcohol, late night eating, some
[9:56] medications, these are going to suppress REM sleep, even if the total number of hours feels fine,
[10:03] you're not going to get that quality sleep. And so if you are consistently getting what you think
[10:09] is enough sleep, but you're not waking up feeling refreshed, then this is a signal worth paying
[10:15] attention to, and you might want to get some data on your heart rate variability, your resting heart
[10:21] rate, or using a sleep tracker to start looking at patterns. Excellent points. In your work with clients,
[10:29] what is the most common hidden drivers of poor sleep that people don't necessarily connect to
[10:36] their sleep problems? Yes, so there are a number of them that I see on a pretty consistent basis.
[10:42] Number one is just like the state of the world in general right now. We're living in a highly volatile
[10:48] unpredictable chaotic time, and a lot of the fears and worries about what is going to happen, what could
[10:56] happen definitely keep people awake at night. Other contributors are like unfinished emotional loops,
[11:04] like conflicts that aren't resolved in your life, things that are left unsaid, ongoing relational
[11:10] tensions, whether that's in the workplace or your personal relationships. Perfectionism is a large
[11:17] hidden driver of poor sleep. This is the brain, it like stays running, keeping the loops open, trying
[11:25] to find the flaws or the risks or worrying about what other people are thinking about you.
[11:31] A sense of chronic urgency, so lawyers especially tend to operate on like this drive that everything
[11:40] is a five-alarm fire and everything is urgent. But when everything is always urgent, the nervous system
[11:48] never gets either the all-clear signal or it doesn't downshift into the the rest and digest state.
[11:57] So I also help my clients learn how to operate in the state of what I call like relaxed intensity.
[12:03] And then there's a lack of transition, you know, going from full work mode to bed immediately with no
[12:09] decompression buffer or even working in your bed. If you are on your laptop, if you're on your phone,
[12:15] responding to emails, whether that's first thing in the morning or late into the evening, your brain
[12:20] gets really confused about what am I supposed to do in this environment? Am I supposed to be working,
[12:25] thinking about problems or am I supposed to be sleeping? And then the last one is really the like the
[12:31] identity piece, that identity fusion with being productive. I always have to be productive. And so when
[12:39] people have an achievement-oriented identity, rest can feel like a failure which creates
[12:47] low-grade anxiety around not working. So those are some common hidden contributors that I see.
[12:55] I know you framed recovery as a performance protocol, not just rest. How does sleep fit into that
[13:04] larger system? And what does treating sleep like a cognitive athlete actually look like in practice?
[13:11] Yeah. So elite athletes do not treat recovery as the absence of training. It is training.
[13:20] So for athletes that physical adaptation of their muscles, the growth of muscles, the healing of
[13:26] muscles and tendons happens during recovery, not during the workout. And cognitive performance works
[13:35] the same way. So the consolidation of information and memories, the repair, the cleaning out of the
[13:42] toxins of the brain, emotional regulation, all of that happens during sleep. So when you skip it on a
[13:50] regular basis, you are not being productive. You are actually withdrawing and taking out withdrawals from
[13:56] your sleep bank and not making deposits into it. So you're running at a sleep deficit.
[14:02] So protocols, what this looks like in practice. Number one is like treating your sleep window as a
[14:08] non-negotiable appointment. This was one of the main things that I changed after I hit my wall with
[14:15] burnout and I was recovering from burnout was to stop staying up late, kind of that sleep procrastination,
[14:25] watching true crime on Netflix on my phone and bed and getting to sleep. So treating it like it's a
[14:32] non-negotiable appointment. It is part of your performance. Then building in that wind down protocol.
[14:39] There's a reason why we have a bedtime routine for kids. It helps their body know the signals
[14:46] that it's time to start to wind down and to be able to transition to sleep easier. We are no different
[14:52] as adults. So building in that wind down time 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. Stay off your
[14:59] phone. Now I will put a little asterisk besides this because sometimes I recommend to my clients that
[15:05] they do a like a non-sleep deep rest protocol or sort of guided mindfulness exercise to help
[15:12] transition their nervous system into the rest or digest state. But when I say stay off your phone,
[15:18] I mean no news, no scrolling, no information that is going to keep your brain alert and active.
[15:25] We think we're getting recovery when we're doing that but we're not. And then sometimes I ask my
[15:31] clients or they want to track sleep data, not for judgment, not to optimize it to the, you know,
[15:39] it's degree, but just to kind of get some baseline figures to work with and see what's actually happening
[15:44] as we start to make adjustments. And then, you know, like, again, integrating rest and recovery
[15:54] throughout your day so you're helping manage the cortisol levels throughout the day. Excellent,
[16:00] excellent ideas. So if somebody is listening to this and they recognize themselves,
[16:07] they're exhausted. They can't shut their brain off at night. They're performing below where they know
[16:12] they're capable. What is the first thing that you'd tell them to look at? Well, first is to stop
[16:20] kind of treating sleep as as the enemy, you know, oftentimes in these environments. Again,
[16:26] it's easy to justify sacrificing sleep in the name of getting work done and I have to get it done
[16:31] and I must get it done. And so sleep really isn't your enemy. It's actually going to be one of your
[16:38] best tools for improved performance. So the first thing is like making that mindset shift
[16:45] and start to get curious about it. You know, your sleep is giving you information.
[16:51] What do you notice? Is it that you can't shut your brain off at night? Are you worrying about not
[16:56] being able to fall asleep? You know, kind of the the worry about sleep actually interferes with
[17:01] our ability to sleep. Are you waking up at 2 a.m. having fears, ruminating, rehearsing tomorrow?
[17:12] These are all signals. So instead of just accepting that you don't sleep well, start to
[17:19] get curious and see what you notice about what is happening with your sleep patterns. And then if you
[17:25] were, if I would recommend one thing to start putting into practice, it would be to start building
[17:33] a bedtime transition and wind down. So looking at what happens between the end of the work day
[17:40] and when you go to bed, how are you spending that time and then deliberately choosing to
[17:46] create some sort of transition routine for yourself 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed,
[17:52] genuine decompression and give yourself permission to do that as part of your performance,
[18:01] your well-being, and your kind of base, like foundation for sustainable success.
[18:09] Well, that is it for today's episode of Mental Performance Unleashed with Emily Heird.
[18:16] To learn more about how Emily helps lawyers and legal leaders strengthen their mental performance,
[18:23] go to VantageViewCoaching.com. Take the free mental performance assessment, it takes about 10
[18:30] minutes and then book a call with Emily to walk through what it reveals about your performance
[18:38] and receive a personalized protocol to start implementing immediately. Remember to subscribe,
[18:45] leave a review, and share this episode with a colleague who could benefit from
[18:50] staying sharp under pressure. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Leigh-Anne.
