I’ve run my own business for almost three decades. It’s been a real roller coaster. There have been some good years, and some bad years. The worst years all had one thing in common: sleep deprivation.
When I was starting out, I believed all of that crap about how real entrepreneurs don’t sleep.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” told myself, and anyone who’d listen.
Guess what? If that’s your philosophy, you’re going to get plenty of sleep, because you’re going to die a lot earlier than you would otherwise.
A chronic lack of sleep makes everything worse. For me, it led physical problems, like weight gain; and cognitive problems, like a loss of memory and a severe reduction in my creative abilities.
Plus, everything just sucked. I was irritable, burnt out, and just shambling through my life like a grumpy zombie. But the worst of it was when I ended up in the hospital because of the physical and emotional tool of stress and sleep deprivation.
To be fair, my troubles sleeping weren’t entirely because of my business ambitions – just one of many contributing factors.
Change — or die
That’s the old entrepreneurial cliche: you need to change your business or you’ll die, crushed by your competitors. But for me, it was personal: I needed to make some dramatic changes in my personal life, or I was heading straight to an early grave, crushed by my stubborn stupidity and a chronic lack of sleep.
About eight years ago, I started making the changes I needed to restore my health, my energy, my enthusiasm, and my creativity. I’ve been remarkably successful (although far from perfect).
And the main reason? Sleep, lots of it. Sure, exercise, diet, cultivating a creative outlet, all contributed. But there’s one thing that makes all of that stuff really work, and it’s sleep.
You can do all the exercise you want, and it won’t help you one bit unless you consistently get all the sleep you need. If you’re exercising regularly, in fact, you’ll need more sleep, not less.
If you want to lose weight, you’ve got to watch what you eat, sure, but that’s so much easier when you’re getting enough rest. One of the first things that happens to me when I don’t get enough sleep is that my appetite goes off the charts. I just crave those carby comfort foods that are just the worst.
But most importantly, you can’t learn or remember a damn thing if you aren’t getting enough sleep. It’s just not possible. It’s the same as exercise: if you exercise harder and harder, and you don’t get enough rest, you’re going to do damage, you aren’t going to get stronger or faster, you’re going to get weaker and sicker and probably injure yourself.
No brain, no gain
Your brain is no different. If you push yourself mentally, if you are trying to learn and improve, to be more creative, to come up with better solutions – to be an entrepreneur – you need to rest that brain every day. You need to sleep.
Now that my sleep is consistently better, I’ve noticed a huge difference in my concentration, my creativity, my problem solving abilities, my ability to learn.
People are like, “when you get older, you just start forgetting stuff, Senior moments, you know. What was I talking about?”
We act like this mental decline is normal, even mandatory. But I wonder how much of this collective cognitive decline is simply a result of massive sleep deprivation.
My sleep isn’t perfect. I still have trouble sleeping some nights, and I don’t always go to bed as early as I should, but it’s getting better and better every week.
I like to sleep. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s the path to optimal performance. The more I sleep, the better I do, whatever it is. This has resulted huge positive changes for my business.
Sleeping my way to success
This is unfortunately not as sexy as it sounds. I figured this out after many many years of making the same stupid mistakes over and and over again. It’s this: If I want to succeed as an entrepreneur, I need to sleep more.
I need to sleep more, with more consistency. I need to sleep deeply.
I’ve realized that I want to be a sleepy entrepreneur. I’ve made getting enough sleep, consistent sleep, my number one priority, and it’s led to more positive changes in my life than I ever imagined.
I’ve also realized another truth of being a sleepy entrepreneur: if I want to succeed at being a sleepy entrepreneur, I have to make money while I’m sleeping. It’s that simple.
I need to focus my efforts on the kind of work that will lead to passive income. This means I have to create: I need to write, make videos, write code, write courses, and reach out to my audience.
That’s my goal: make money while I sleep. Does this mean that the more I sleep, the more I’ll earn? There’s only one way to find out.
Let’s do this.
Featured image: “Sleeping tiger up close,” published on July 11, 2016 by Martin Kníže on Unsplash.
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