Credit: BrilliantEye
Growing to Sleep (1 of 2)
Written by LaMar Sheppard, DC, CSCS, QME
In 1938, William “Bill” Hewlett and David “Dave” Packard started building electronic devices part-time in a garage. They invented an oscillator used for testing sound equipment and sold eight devices to The Walt Disney Company for the release of Fantasia. During the first decade, Bill and David spent countless hours building a company while personifying an emerging start-up culture in Northern California. The burning image of the entrepreneur and developer working incessantly at all hours began in that garage. As a result, their cohorts treated habits like sleeping as a barrier to innovation.
Bill Gates shared his challenges to normalize sleeping on a recent podcast. At Microsoft, the culture recognized sleeping as “laziness and unnecessary”. He admits to engaging in competitive exchanges with colleagues on how minimal sleep they achieved to succeed. Bill Gates changed this position after his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Today, he commits to sleeping for seven hours nightly and maintains sleep quality by checking his relevant biomarkers daily.
Sleep quality bolsters cognition which encompasses memory, attention and executive function. However, fragmentation and chronic disorders inhibit sleep maintenance. Restorative sleeping is essential for optimal cognitive
function and exploring your routine may prevent or mitigate the downside of elderhood. Everyone benefits from at least seven hours which enables up to five cycles of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Young founders become maturing leaders. Many prefer behaviors that consider sleeping and eating as barriers to innovation. Anecdotally, I believe this perspective continues to evolve as business leaders prepare for elderhood by reinforcing their health profiles. In this case, leaders demonstrate personal change to encourage habits among their cohorts which enhance the quality of life.