About 30 minutes I ago I woke up from a 2(ish) hour nap. That wasn’t at all my intention, I was intending to take a 26-minute, “nap zone” nap, but apparently my body needed more sleep.
A year ago I read a book called Brain Rules. In it, the author, John Medina, explains 12 principles for improving yourself through your brain. Brain Rule #3 is Sleep well, think well. I went back to the book and read through the brain rule looking for quotes to pull but the information is one long story that a few quotes wouldn’t do it justice. You should really read the book!
Here’s a brief summary of Brain Rule #3:
- The brain has two armies. The sleep army, and the awake army. One army wants you sleeping all the time while the other army wants you awake at all times. The longer one stays in control, the less likely it’ll be strong enough to hold off the other army. This is what creates the circadian cycle. And our need to sleep/be awake.
- Scientists don’t know how much sleep each person actually needs. It varies too much by individual, and other characteristics like age, to determine the perfect amount of sleep. On average, 7-9 hours is the amount of sleep we ideally need. Without getting the required sleep, we will form sleep debt that’ll be hard to make up in the future.
- Naps are powerful. Mid-afternoon drowsiness is the natural battle of our sleep armies versus our awake armies. There is no going around it. We are all affected by a tiredness sometime afternoon and before evening. Medina hypothesizes this is why siestas are commonly used in other cultures. LBJ, our 36th president, took a 30 minute nap each day. NASA did a study that 26-minutes (link above) is the perfect amount of sleep. The mid-afternoon drowsiness is the “nap zone.” Although we might not all be capable of napping during this time, we should make sure we don’t schedule meetings or do important tasks in our nap zones.
- Sleeping on it. Although we’re asleep, our brain is still trying to solve lots of problems while we’re dreaming. If we have challenging tasks it may be wise to sleep on it. A lot of great thinkers have slept on it to solve major world problems. It is a tactic that can be deployed to accomplish difficult problems.
I used to look at sleep as something holding me back from accomplishing great things. We all hear stories about startup founders, CEO’s of billion-dollar companies, world leaders that only get 4-5 hours of sleep a night. We look at them as someone to emulate. But they’re actually doing themselves a disservice. They are taking out a sleep loan that they’ll probably never be able to fully repay. They’ll end up with heavy interest rates that actually make it harder to think.
Our society looks at napping as being lazy. But it’s anything but lazy. If I hadn’t taken a nap my body would’ve been in a sleep debt to start the week. I know my body. I spent too much time trying to fight the sleep army. But I don’t need to. Now I know, sleeping well is what leads to thinking well.