Contributed by Giles Watkins, coach, mentor and author of Positive Sleep: A Holistic Approach To Resolve Sleep Issues and Transform Your Life. The words “sleep” and “entrepreneur” may seem like strange bedfellows unless you are running a start-up in areas such as making mattresses or developing a new Sleep app. However sleep is a wonderful, natural and free resource that anyone starting or running a business must draw on optimally to be the best they can be for their customers, colleagues, stakeholders and loved ones. Way too often, in my opinion, there is an emphasis on the downside of not getting enough quality sleep. Surely it’s far better to emphasize the many benefits of getting enough sleep. So whilst I share the agony of a decade of my own sleeping problems in my book Positive Sleep, my emphasis is more on the life-changing effects of getting the sleep you need. So what is enough sleep? How can sleep help you? Are there any tips that can really help you sleep better? Sleep science itself is really only about 100 years old, and multiple studies over that time show that the vast majority of us need 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. This need not necessarily be in one go, so the opportunity for a nap (NASA recommends 26 minutes!), ideally before 3 pm can truly help us catch up on our rest during the day. One part of us that disproportionately benefits from being well-rested is the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which directs our executive functions—areas such as problem-solving, reasoning, organization, planning and carrying out plans. How Sleep Benefits Your Professional PerformanceFour qualities an entrepreneur needs which are especially enhanced by good sleep are:
And it’s not just the mental side of running a business that can be boosted by being better rested. We physically need the regeneration that getting enough sleep provides. Entrepreneurs can learn a lot from performance athletes in this regard. For example:
How to Sleep Better Every NightSo what can busy entrepreneurs do about getting more sleep? Here are five suggestions that have worked for me in my own “busyness” life and helped to transform the way I feel every day.
I’ll leave the last word to a former colleague of mine, Tanya Kabalin. Tanya hails from a family of business owners and founded her own, Olakira, after heading up Shell’s Downstream business in South Africa. She writes, “I believe the leaders who make the greatest impact are those who consciously create time, space and energy to master the art of managing the immediate pressures of ‘now’ whilst imagining and building the ‘new.’ And this can’t be done without good health and enough rest. Great leaders know this and work deliberately hard to achieve it.” Giles Watkins, author of Positive Sleep: A Holistic Approach To Resolve Sleep Issues and Transform Your Life, is a coach and mentor with both Aberkyn and Vistage. Watkins has over 30 years of global business and general management experience in enabling decision-makers to solve problems, achieve balance, deliver superior results and sleep better at night. For more information please visit LIDPublishing.com. The post Why Entrepreneurs Must Harness the Power of Sleep appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. via Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization https://ift.tt/2PzaBlt
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