I used to have a crazy goal.
I was going to set a goal to live my life sleeping under 6 hours a day,
because I was busy.
I have things to do, people to see, places to visit.
Why waste so much of being alive on planet Earth asleep?
Today I know that I was wrong.
Sleep is a goal in itself.
Sleep is essential to how we show up and function in the world.
My goal to sleep under 6 hours, I've tossed it out the window.
Now I aim, every day, to sleep between 7 and 8 hours,
because I've seen what sleep gives me.
Sleep is a form of recovery.
It is so essential to our health, but so many of us misunderstand it
and do it wrong.
You may have heard of the 10,000 hours study by K Anders Ericsson.
He studied masters and found that to achieve mastery in any topic,
you got to put in roughly 10,000 hours of practice.
But a lot of people missed a certain aspect of that study where Ericsson
looked at sleep.
He found that the great masters of the world were sleeping for almost
eight and a half hours a day.
The average American?
Six hours and 50 minutes.
Masters were sleeping more.
In fact, if you look at the world today, many of the most optimized human beings
in the world are spending more time dedicated to sleep, dedicated to rest,
dedicated to recovery, because we know our bodies need it.
Tom Rath, in the book Eat Move Sleep, said that if you deprive yourself of
just 90 minutes of sleep, it's like operating at work the next day
as if one-third of your brain capacity has been suppressed.
That's like starting your day downing a pint of beer.
Would you do that?
Well, why then do we think that sacrificing our sleep
is something acceptable?
So here's what happens.
We, when we are faced with overwork, sacrifice sleep.
We come back from work later, we stay up late, sacrificing our sleep,
hoping to make up for it the next day.
It never works.
A drop in cognitive ability, the change in our moods and emotions
make the next day harder, thus causing us to stay up late again
to pile in more work.
It's a vicious cycle.
And it hurts you.
It ages you.
Give your body the rest you need.
Today, my goal is to sleep for 7 to 8 hours a day.
I track my sleep, I log my sleep.
In the Mindvalley office, we even have sleeping pods,
so that if our people feel that they need an afternoon nap, they can take it freely,
without being judged.
I take sleep supplements to allow me to go deeper into sleep.
I cut off caffeine, as much as I love coffee, after a certain hour every day,
so it doesn't interfere with my sleep.
And my sleep process is as disciplined as my meditation process
or my exercise process.
Yet, many people in the world still don't get enough sleep.
And this is why one of the projects that we're looking at Mindvalley is to work
with world class sleep doctors to help people all around the world
get better sleep.
Too many Americans are hooked on sleeping pills.
Too many people drink so they can sleep at night, not realizing that alcohol actually
creates poorer quality sleep.
Too many people stay up late or wake up too early in the morning,
thinking this is the hallmark of a productive life.
The result is that our bodies don't get the nourishment and the sleep
that is necessary for us to be our best selves.
So if you find these ideas interesting, sign up for my new masterclass
on the power of sleep with Dr. Michael Breus,
the biggest name in sleep in America today.
I'll see you there.