Sleep More and Hustle Less
Every time I’m on social media, I often see posts telling us to
- Hustle hard and grind to success
- Earn more money by taking my online course to ‘insert some side hustle here’
- Wake up at 4 am to get ahead of everyone else
We are often told that to get ahead we need to sacrifice our time and our lives; every hour, every day, every week, to the pursuit of either career advancement or a dream of financial independence and early retirement. However, I believe that while hard work and sacrifice are necessary to lead a meaningful life, it’s not worth it if it comes at the cost of our health, well-being, and our sleep. I think we all need to give ourselves a break by hustling less, sleeping more, and spending more time with our loved ones.
“While jobs are sustenance, careers are altars upon which all else is sacrificed”
Mary Oliver
In the end, is that sacrifice going to bring your life fulfillment?
This article is more personal, but I hope it will provide you with some valuable takeaways. Here’s how this post is broken down.
Lessons from Why We Sleep
(Disclaimer: Amazon Affiliate Link)
Matthew Walker is the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. He describes sleep as a magical elixir that grants life and restores health. Here are the most notable takeaways from his book, Why We Sleep:
- Our body accumulates sleep debt – meaning losing 2 hours of sleep a night for 12 days is equal to having gone 1 whole day (24 hours) without sleeping.
- The amount of time we spend in bed doesn’t equal the time we are actually asleep
- When we don’t get enough sleep our bodies and brains downshift to a lower gear. We will think our performance is normal but we are actually operating in a state of lower performance.
- There are very few people that need less than 7 hours of sleep per night.
- Lack of sleep impacts our mood and outlook on life, making us more irritable and unhappy
- Our immune system suffers when we don’t get sleep – even one night of poor sleep reduces the number of cancer-fighting cells in our body
- We will make more mistakes and bad choices when we don’t sleep enough.
Personal Experience of Losing Sleep
I began working as a release engineer after graduating with an engineering degree. The job was centered on creating and following processes, creating project timelines, managing suppliers, creating documentation, and developing efficiencies for manufacturing and integrating parts at scale; all the things a good engineering leader needed to have a handle on.
If I were to propel on the engineering management path, being a release engineer was a box that needed to be checked. My schedule looked something like this:
- 5:30 am – wake up to go to the gym so I could “be healthy”
- 7:30 am – be in the office to have meetings with my suppliers
- 6:00 pm – leave the office after a day that mostly consisted of meetings with engineering teams, suppliers, manufacturing personnel, other managers, etc.
- 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm – I had just finished reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and binging “How I Built This Podcasts.” I was determined to build something of my own to achieve financial success so I spent 3 hours after work developing an iOS SAS (software as a service) app
- 9:00 pm – Drive home to rush and eat dinner, chat with my girlfriend (who is now my loving and understanding wife), and get ready for bed
- 10:30 pm – go to bed and start the whole day over.
I thought sleeping at 10:30 and waking up at 5:30 in the morning should give me a sufficient 7 hours of sleep. I later found out that time in bed is never equal to time asleep. The most efficient sleepers are only asleep 95% of the time they’re in bed. Realistically, I was only getting less than 6 hours of actual sleep.
In just 2 weeks of doing this, the effect on my brain was similar to going a full day without sleeping. In 4 weeks, it was like pulling 2 all-nighters. My sleep debt kept compounding and I soon began to see the effects:
- I was sleepy at work, more irritable and impatient, and very depressed about life.
- My weight training progress plateaued and began to regress
- The relationships with my loved ones were degrading due to neglect and disinterest.
It was only when the relationship with my girlfriend was on the brink of collapse did I realize that something needed to change. I started to give myself a 9 1/2 sleep window because according to my Fitbit I’m a very inefficient sleeper (for every 1 hour I’m in bed, I only get 45-50 minutes of actual sleep).
This had profound effects on my attitude and outlook on life.
- I realized I would not actually be happy as a leader in the release engineering world.
- I was less irritable and had more time to engage and empathize with my girlfriend. This saved my relationship.
- I was happy with life and less despondent.
- I realized my current job lacked all the qualities I enjoyed about engineering. I was able to use this realization to find a job that I actually enjoyed, and because of that, I was able to excel in the new position.
- I still allocate time to working on side projects, but I’m less extreme about it. This allows me to remain joyful and excited about working on these projects.
- My gains in the weight room improved, and ultimately, isn’t that what it’s all about?
Conclusions
Investing in our well-being and health is equally as important as investing in our retirement savings. It’s understandable if we have to lose a couple of hours of sleep if we’re close to achieving something important, but I had to stop to ask myself a couple of questions:
- Is there an end in sight to the long nights?
- Is this really worth my health and well-being?
- Am I neglecting other parts of my life that are equally important?
- Is the world going to end or will someone get hurt/die if I don’t get this done by today?
I realized I should strive to work hard, but not at the cost of my sleep, my health, and my time with loved ones.