Why sleep is the best investment we can make, and more important the busier we are

Knowing a lot of entrepreneurs, people chasing careers in finance, the space sector, or in academia, I often have to listen to someone sharing their issues with fatigue, exhaustion, burnouts, etc. And having struggled with it for a decade myself, it is hard to blame them. Still, it is quite obvious that it's not good for anyone or anything. It isn't good for their well-being, nor does it help them reach their goals. So with fatigue now being a serious pandemic, what is the cure?

I think it lies in the title, being able to view rest as an investment.

^{Good quality sleep is perhaps the most underrated super power that we humans have. Yet, the more seemingly ambitious and "serious" people are about reaching their goals, the more they tend to ignore this opportunity to perform better.}

Unhealthy delusions of productivity and ambition

It’s all too common to hear busy people rationalize their unhealthy and self-destructive behaviors. To some, their business may be their baby and they want to do anything to grow it, for others it may be a perception they have that hard work is inherently good and requires sacrificing breaks and sleep. Or perhaps one is pursuing a goal that one sees as greater than oneself, like reducing poverty or helping combat climate change, and thus sacrifice too much of their own well-being in the process.

In any case, it should be clear that this is not a healthy mindset or pattern of behavior. First of all, it is not sustainable, so even if you are serious about sacrificing a lot in order to accomplish something, that still won’t work out if you can’t keep going for long enough to accomplish it. Second, it fails to understand that sleep and good breaks are themselves vital input variables to improve and enhance your own performance. And by that, I’m not only talking about your ability to stay awake and put in enough hours of work but also your peak performance levels that, as I’ll examine more closely later, often have higher marginal benefit than any other work that you do.

If you’re really serious about what you do, then care less about how many hours you spend working towards it, or how other people may perceive you as hard-working, and instead focus intensely on the quality of the work that you do and the resulting impact that you make. Sometimes, that will require investing time in yourself, and sleep is the best example of a good investment.

The benefits of sleep

The benefits of good quality, uninterrupted sleep for around 8 hours per night are now very well documented. And by that, I mean both the effect of sufficient quantity and quality. Most understand that they need enough sleep, but not as many seem to grasp the idea of different sleep qualities. Luckily, we’ve learned a lot in recent years.

Some of the benefits of frequent good quality sleep includes:

Getting sick less often. (Can't work hard if you're sick all the time!)
Reduced stress and improved mood. (Both helps make you more collaborative and have better relationships with partners, colleagues, or customers)
Improved cognitive function (Obviously good for producing higher quality work, solving more difficult problems, and making better decisions).
Improved concentration (all of the above + increased likelihood of managing to work also when it's not what you want to do).
Increased emotional happiness and well-being.

There is hardly anything in this world that is worth sacrificing the benefits above for. But as I’ll get into in more detail below, this isn’t just due to the importance of a good work-life balance. This is the case even if all you value and care about is your work.

80/20 rule

You may have heard about the 80-20 rule. Basically, it is saying that 80% of the value or output we create stems from 20% of the effort or input that we make. It seems to apply to almost anything in life. 80% of the growth of a portfolio comes from 20% of the best-performing assets in it. 20% of your most loyal customers make up 80% of your sales. And on it goes. In other words, the most important and impactful things that you have to do, are not only the most important things that you do, they dwarf all the rest.

So looking back at how the delusions of working non-stop and reducing breaks is somehow a sign of high ambition, it should be clear that it is not worth trading off good decision-making capabilities when dealing with the most important work. And as we’ve seen that good sleep and proper breaks are vital to improving concentration levels and cognitive function, failing to get proper sleep is not only not justified by pursuing high ambitions, it is hurting those ambitions.

Establishing an evidence and reason-based perspective on sleep in order to dismiss the fear-based reasons one may give oneself to think that working all night is a good idea is thus a key change one should make to set oneself up for real success. Seeing sleep and breaks as an investment in yourself and thus in your goals is a powerful way of doing so, and I recommend that you adopt it immediately.