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I always chuckle a little bit whenever
I hear someone ask a famous person

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what their secret to success is.

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As if there is one simple hack that will
magically transform their lives, making

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them millions of dollars overnight at the
same time as giving them beach bodies.

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While there may not be one simple
thing, or one single thing, I've

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discovered that there are three things
that almost every successful person

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has come back to time and time again.

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I refer to these as the wellness
triad of sleeping, eating, and moving.

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I know it sounds simple, but
I assure you, it's not easy.

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In today's episode, I'm going to share
some surprising facts about sleep

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and show you how you can tweak your
sleep routine to overcome that feeling

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of tiredness throughout the day.

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I'm Amin Ahmed and welcome
to Be Well, Do Well.

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In her book The Sleep Revolution,
Arianna Huffington talks about how she

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passed out and woke up in a pool of
her own blood with a broken cheek bone.

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The reason for this was sleep
deprivation and exhaustion.

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She was working 18 hours a day and
that took a toll on her health and

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led to a total collapse of her body.

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An even more tragic and extreme example
of this is the death of Matsuri Takahashi.

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She was a 24 year old Japanese woman
who took her own life after working

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extreme hours for months on end.

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According to the Tokyo Reporter, Takahashi
was working 130 hours of overtime a

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month, with only 10 hours of sleep a week.

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That's right, not a day, but a week.

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Her suicide is sadly not
an isolated incident.

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In Japan, the work culture
is demanding and complex.

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There's even a term for this,
called karoshi, which loosely

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translates to overwork death.

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Many Japanese workers would suddenly
die at their desks from heart attacks or

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strokes, or, more recently, by suicide.

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What we see in Japan with karoshi is
just a wake up call for the rest of us.

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With the pace of technology and
business around us, we see seemingly

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successful entrepreneurs such as the
ex founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey,

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getting only four to six hours of sleep.

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And it's also been said that Thomas
Edison survived on only three

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or four hours of sleep a night.

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Does that mean that we
should also follow suit?

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Of course not.

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There's got to be a better way.

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The obvious solution is to get sleep.

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But how do you get more
and better quality sleep?

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One where you realize that getting
more quality sleep will actually

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improve your performance and
productivity rather than reducing it.

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This is where Parkinson's
Law comes to play.

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Parkinson's Law states that work
expands so as to fill the time

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available for its completion.

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For example, if you give a task
one hour to complete, it'll often

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take the full hour, even though it
could have been done in less time.

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Or, another example is that
if someone's income increases,

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their expenses also increase.

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Let's apply Parkinson's Law
to our topic of sleep today.

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By sleeping more at night, you
obviously have less time during the day.

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But leveraging Parkinson's law,
you should be able to get done the

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same amount of work in less time.

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However, it's not that simple.

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There's one more thing that you
need to do to master the time

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that you have during the day.

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Rather than jumping from task to task
frantically trying to get more done,

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focus on one task until you're done.

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My favorite acronym for this is FOCUS.

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Follow one course until success.

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Here's a framework to get you doing
more during your working hours.

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It's worked for me and for
countless other entrepreneurs.

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Getting high quality sleep is so
much more than just the number

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of hours that you're unconscious.

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The three big factors that determine the
quality of your sleep are when you end

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your workday, when you finish your last
meal, and what I call digital sunset.

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The first is when you end your workday.

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The sad fact is that as entrepreneurs,
especially those working from

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home, work really never ends.

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We can take time during the day
to jump in the shower, go for a

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walk, and then work after dinner.

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this lack of full work shutdown means that
our brains are really never off, which

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makes it impossible to really be mindful.

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My favorite productivity scheduling
app, Sansama, has a built in end

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of day routine that ends in just
saying out loud, shutdown complete.

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The second is your last meal.

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Put simply, going to bed with a
belly full of food is just going

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to result in poor quality sleep.

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I might even do an episode
just about this topic alone.

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It's that important.

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The last is digital sunset.

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When do you actually turn off your
screens before going to sleep?

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There's endless studies online
that have shown that staying on

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your screens late into the evening
disrupts your circadian rhythm and

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increases stress and anxiety levels.

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So as a recap, the framework to
getting better sleep is eat less before

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bedtime, shutdown complete at the end
of your workday means no more working

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after that shutdown time that you
define, and no screens in the bedroom.

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Get an old school alarm clock or
whatever you need to do, but no

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phones, no screens in the bedroom.

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This framework is great for feeling
better in the long term, but here's

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something even more simple that
you can do right now in the next 5

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minutes to improve your sleep and
productivity over the next 14 days.

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You may have heard the saying that
what gets measured, gets done.

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If you want to improve your sleep,
a sleep journal is super helpful.

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With a sleep journal, you can track
your sleeping and waking times, the

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quality of your sleep, and other simple
metrics like how you felt that night.

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I've linked to a downloadable sleep
journal here in the show notes.

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Download it now and you
can get started right away.

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If you'd like to go deeper on
this topic about sleep and how it

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affects productivity, I've put a
link to a YouTube video in the show

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notes and a link to a book that I
think you might find fascinating.

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this journey of the fundamentals about
sleep, eat, and move The wellness

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triad, if you remember in the intro.

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In the next episode, we'll talk about
how food impacts your mood and energy

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and effectiveness and all that you do.

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I'll share a cool little hack
that'll help you keep your

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energy stable throughout the day.

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Thanks again for joining me and I'll
catch you in tomorrow's episode.