When did getting 6-8 hours of sleep become a bad thing? Pretty sure it was once we got older and we realized we truly didn’t have control over our lives and schedules. Life as an adolescent teen and even as an adult in college were simpler. Our sleep schedule was the perfect mix of what we needed. No one ever told us to stop sleeping, on the contrary, they encouraged more sleep.
However, in the last 3-5 years after really digging deeper into the entrepreneur, small business, and startup world I noticed that people try to make you feel bad for getting sleep. They post quotes such as “I’ll Get Sleep When I am Dead” “While You Are Sleeping, I am Getting Money” “Sleep Is For Broke People” and so on. To be honest these quotes are rather juvenile.
There are countless articles that state how many hours Oprah, Warren, Martha, Diddy and other successful individuals get. Most of these articles state they get an average of 4-6 hours a night. That is still a good amount of sleep.
I don’t want this to be article refuting or debating what researchers have study for years. Instead, I’d like it to be more of an open dialogue about why we make others feel a certain type of way (less respectable) for choosing to sleep.
Personally, I recommend getting between 6-8 hours of sleep. My body functions better when I am eating right and have rest. This is something I can attest to. When my company first launched, I felt that if I wasn’t working I wouldn’t be successful. After three hospital visits from sleep deprivation, dehydration as well as other things, I knew better than to starve my body of rest.
It might be the cool thing to say but how many of those people posting those quotes are actually living up to those quotes is something you might want to also consider.
Remember the internet has made it to where people can be anything they want behind a computer monitor. Another question would be, have you thought of the health risk to your PERSONAL body that come with lack of sleep. Why are you depriving yourself of those extra hours?
Things to think about…Are you operating at your highest frequency when you are not getting sleep. You might have stayed up for 24 hours straight working but was it your best work? Did you give it 100% during each one of those waking hours or did it decrease over the time? What you did in those hours might equate to 40% of what you normally do.
So, is it really worth working on fewer hours of sleep just to be a member of #TeamNoSleep. To my knowledge membership doesn’t have benefits or anything special tied to it. You just get to say you are on the team.
What are your thoughts regarding why entrepreneurs need sleep to run their businesses smoothly? How many hours of sleep are you currently getting now? Are you operating at your highest work level of frequency when you lack sleep?
Image by Kassandra Bay Resort; creative common
