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00:00:00I always chuckle a little bit whenever I hear someone ask a famous person
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00:00:03what their secret to success is.
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00:00:06As if there is one simple hack that will magically transform their lives, making
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00:00:11them millions of dollars overnight at the same time as giving them beach bodies.
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00:00:15While there may not be one simple thing, or one single thing, I've
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00:00:19discovered that there are three things that almost every successful person
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00:00:23has come back to time and time again.
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00:00:25I refer to these as the wellness triad of sleeping, eating, and moving.
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00:00:30I know it sounds simple, but I assure you, it's not easy.
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00:00:34In today's episode, I'm going to share some surprising facts about sleep
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00:00:38and show you how you can tweak your sleep routine to overcome that feeling
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00:00:42of tiredness throughout the day.
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00:00:44I'm Amin Ahmed and welcome to Be Well, Do Well.
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00:00:49In her book The Sleep Revolution, Arianna Huffington talks about how she
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00:00:52passed out and woke up in a pool of her own blood with a broken cheek bone.
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00:00:58The reason for this was sleep deprivation and exhaustion.
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00:01:02She was working 18 hours a day and that took a toll on her health and
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00:01:07led to a total collapse of her body.
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00:01:10An even more tragic and extreme example of this is the death of Matsuri Takahashi.
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00:01:17She was a 24 year old Japanese woman who took her own life after working
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00:01:21extreme hours for months on end.
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00:01:24According to the Tokyo Reporter, Takahashi was working 130 hours of overtime a
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00:01:30month, with only 10 hours of sleep a week.
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00:01:34That's right, not a day, but a week.
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00:01:36Her suicide is sadly not an isolated incident.
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00:01:40In Japan, the work culture is demanding and complex.
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00:01:44There's even a term for this, called karoshi, which loosely
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00:01:48translates to overwork death.
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00:01:51Many Japanese workers would suddenly die at their desks from heart attacks or
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00:01:55strokes, or, more recently, by suicide.
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00:01:59What we see in Japan with karoshi is just a wake up call for the rest of us.
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00:02:05With the pace of technology and business around us, we see seemingly
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00:02:09successful entrepreneurs such as the ex founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey,
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00:02:14getting only four to six hours of sleep.
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00:02:16And it's also been said that Thomas Edison survived on only three
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00:02:21or four hours of sleep a night.
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00:02:23Does that mean that we should also follow suit?
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00:02:26Of course not.
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00:02:26There's got to be a better way.
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00:02:30The obvious solution is to get sleep.
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00:02:32But how do you get more and better quality sleep?
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00:02:38One where you realize that getting more quality sleep will actually
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00:02:42improve your performance and productivity rather than reducing it.
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00:02:46This is where Parkinson's Law comes to play.
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00:02:49Parkinson's Law states that work expands so as to fill the time
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00:02:53available for its completion.
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00:02:55For example, if you give a task one hour to complete, it'll often
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00:02:59take the full hour, even though it could have been done in less time.
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00:03:03Or, another example is that if someone's income increases,
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00:03:06their expenses also increase.
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00:03:08Let's apply Parkinson's Law to our topic of sleep today.
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00:03:12By sleeping more at night, you obviously have less time during the day.
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00:03:16But leveraging Parkinson's law, you should be able to get done the
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00:03:20same amount of work in less time.
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00:03:22However, it's not that simple.
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00:03:24There's one more thing that you need to do to master the time
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00:03:28that you have during the day.
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00:03:30Rather than jumping from task to task frantically trying to get more done,
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00:03:34focus on one task until you're done.
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00:03:37My favorite acronym for this is FOCUS.
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00:03:39Follow one course until success.
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00:03:42Here's a framework to get you doing more during your working hours.
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00:03:46It's worked for me and for countless other entrepreneurs.
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00:03:50Getting high quality sleep is so much more than just the number
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00:03:53of hours that you're unconscious.
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00:03:55The three big factors that determine the quality of your sleep are when you end
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00:03:59your workday, when you finish your last meal, and what I call digital sunset.
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00:04:05The first is when you end your workday.
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00:04:07The sad fact is that as entrepreneurs, especially those working from
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00:04:11home, work really never ends.
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00:04:14We can take time during the day to jump in the shower, go for a
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00:04:17walk, and then work after dinner.
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00:04:20this lack of full work shutdown means that our brains are really never off, which
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00:04:24makes it impossible to really be mindful.
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00:04:27My favorite productivity scheduling app, Sansama, has a built in end
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00:04:32of day routine that ends in just saying out loud, shutdown complete.
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00:04:37The second is your last meal.
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00:04:39Put simply, going to bed with a belly full of food is just going
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00:04:43to result in poor quality sleep.
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00:04:45I might even do an episode just about this topic alone.
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00:04:48It's that important.
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00:04:50The last is digital sunset.
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00:04:52When do you actually turn off your screens before going to sleep?
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00:04:56There's endless studies online that have shown that staying on
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00:04:59your screens late into the evening disrupts your circadian rhythm and
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00:05:02increases stress and anxiety levels.
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00:05:05So as a recap, the framework to getting better sleep is eat less before
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00:05:09bedtime, shutdown complete at the end of your workday means no more working
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00:05:13after that shutdown time that you define, and no screens in the bedroom.
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00:05:18Get an old school alarm clock or whatever you need to do, but no
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00:05:22phones, no screens in the bedroom.
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00:05:24This framework is great for feeling better in the long term, but here's
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00:05:27something even more simple that you can do right now in the next 5
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00:05:30minutes to improve your sleep and productivity over the next 14 days.
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00:05:35You may have heard the saying that what gets measured, gets done.
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00:05:39If you want to improve your sleep, a sleep journal is super helpful.
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00:05:44With a sleep journal, you can track your sleeping and waking times, the
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00:05:47quality of your sleep, and other simple metrics like how you felt that night.
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00:05:52I've linked to a downloadable sleep journal here in the show notes.
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00:05:55Download it now and you can get started right away.
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00:05:57If you'd like to go deeper on this topic about sleep and how it
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00:06:00affects productivity, I've put a link to a YouTube video in the show
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00:06:04notes and a link to a book that I think you might find fascinating.
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00:06:08this journey of the fundamentals about sleep, eat, and move The wellness
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00:06:13triad, if you remember in the intro.
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00:06:15In the next episode, we'll talk about how food impacts your mood and energy
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00:06:19and effectiveness and all that you do.
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00:06:21I'll share a cool little hack that'll help you keep your
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00:06:24energy stable throughout the day.
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00:06:26Thanks again for joining me and I'll catch you in tomorrow's episode.
