What’s the reason that most of us don’t get the sleep that we should? There’s too much to do, right? We feel like that we’re burning the candle at both ends and there’s just only so much time in the day, which leads us to putting off that early bedtime, or that reasonable bedtime night after night.
Well, I want to flip that excuse on its head and show you why sleep is actually going to help enhance 5 areas that are critical to us as business owners.
By the end of reading this post, you will no longer have any reason to feel guilty about going to bed at a reasonable hour—lengthy to do-list be darned.
#1. Productivity
Research tells us that it is a myth that people who stay up late get more done.
What’s more, people who are sleep-deprived actually have more mistakes in their work.
Don’t believe me? Time to put some science behind it. The Lancet published a study among physicians. These physicians were rated two times doing the exact same task—first, performing a task having had a good night’s sleep, and then performing that same exact while sleep-deprived.
The same exact people actually took 14% longer when they were sleep-deprived, and included 20% more errors.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my doctor making an error. And I don’t want to be making more errors that I need to either in my business. Neither do you.
You stand behind quality work. You’ve worked hard to build your and create something that you’re proud of. You don’t need to be running the risk of making 20% more errors in your work. And you also don’t need to be taking extra time to do it.
We stay up because we don’t think there’s enough time, but we are actually wasting time when we prolong the cycle of being sleep-deprived.
You’re actually going to be more productive when you’re rested, and the science shows it.
#2. Focus
The amount of focus that we have when we had a good night’s sleep is so much greater than when we don’t.
The Journal of Applied Psycholog tested people looked at the amount of time people wasted when they were sleep deprived—specifially, the amount of time they wasted surfing on the internet. (Which is way applicable for those of us who run our businesses online! )
What they found is that people who are well-rested spent 30 seconds less time surfing the internet for every extra minute of sleep that they had
Every extra minute you get sleeping means you’re going to be wasting half a minute less doing meaningless stuff. And let’s be honest–that meaningless stuff typically drains you.
Your focus automatically sharpens when you’ve had more time between the sheets. And it’s critical to us as business owners to be able to stay on task. We just can’t afford to waste time when we’re not just punching a clock and waiting for it to run out. How we spend our time as entrepreneurs matters.
When we’re scattered and distracted, our businesses don’t grow. (Which means we don’t get paid like we could—ouch.)
#3. Learning
How much time do you spend on a weekly basis learning? Whether on business podcasts, marketing courses, or a particular skill that you teach or use in your business, most business owners invest a significant amount of their time on learning.
The learning process is actually highly accelerated by good quality sleep.
When scientists look at the way the brain activity moves and ebbs and flows after we’ve been learning something, we discover something a little surprising. You might think that the learning center in our brains would be lighting up only as we’re taking in that information.
But in fact, the part of the brain that encodes that information to memory actually takes place up to 24 hours after we take in that information or learn a new skill. And the majority of the absorption of that material comes when we sleep. Sleep has a special way of encoding everything that we’ve learned and actually committing it to our long-term memory, so we can access it later.
#4. Decision Making
Decision-making drastically improves when we’ve had a good night’s sleep.
First, a bit about how the brain makes decisions.
The brain processes information and makes decisions from two areas of the brain. They’re both important, but one is a little more advanced than the other, and that is the pre-frontal cortex.
Further back in our brains is where the amygdala hangs out, which is the center of our emotional response. While the amygdala is helping for those situations that call for gut reactions, it’s a very rapid response and not the type of decision-making that’s particularly helpful for complex decisions.
While our pre-frontal cortex is the more evolved center of our brains, it’s the part of our brains that’s responsible for being able to weigh things objectively for higher-order decisions. It’s the part of the brain that enables us to look at things from different angles. To weigh pros and cons. And to also see connections between things that are not always immediately obvious to us.
So, what determines which part of the brain kicks in—the amygdala or the prefrontal cortex– when we need to make a decision?
The pre-frontal cortex goes almost dark when we have not had enough sleep.
The pre-frontal cortex does not rule our judgment or decision-making when we are sleep-deprived.
And we need it to! As entrepreneurs, we’re constantly making important decisions, from strategy to team management to content creation.
We need to make sure that our decision-making center is sharp. Sleep is one of the best ways to do this.
#5. Creativity
More sleep leads to better creativity.
In fact, studies show that we have about 30% more creative power when we’ve had a good night’s sleep than when we’ve slept poorly.
A well-rested brain allows us to engage in flexible reasoning, which can connect the dots between bits of data that we might not otherwise think are related.
Creativity is important to all of us as business owners, but especially for those whose business model itself is creative in nature.
If you have a handmade shop, if you do art, or if you’re a writer, then certainly creativity is absolutely vital to you as an entrepreneur.
But all entrepreneurs need to employ creativity, even if it’s just coming up with the absolute best marketing funnel, or the best opt-in idea to get people to join our e-mail list.
Creativity is also an important component of being able to problem-solve effectively.
These 5 areas are just a few of the things that matter to us as business owners that require sleep.
Investing in good sleep is directly investing in the quality of your work’s output.
Put this theory to the test, and then come let us know how it goes!
Want more practical, science-backed strategies to help you bring your A-Game? Download my Free Self-Care Guide For Entrepreneurs!
