In June 2010, Adam Mansbach sent out a simple post meant more as catharsis than promotion: “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the — to Sleep.”
It was 2 a.m., and by the next morning, Mansbach knew he’d struck a chord. Within a year the cult-classic, Go the F**k to Sleep, was born and has since sold more than two million copies worldwide (as well as an amazing audio rendition from Samuel L. Jackson).
So what does a NSFW children’s book have to do with being an entrepreneur and leader? Everything.
The symptoms surround us — stress, addiction, burnout, disease — and what we need is, quite frankly, a profanity-laced wake up call about the one time of day we neglect most.
Bedtime, your business and your body.
Why, exactly, does bedtime matter so much for entrepreneurs?
Arianna Huffington’s recent book, The Sleep Revolution, explains: “We sacrifice sleep in the name of productivity, but, ironically, our loss of sleep, despite the extra hours we put in at work, adds up to more than eleven days of lost productivity per year per worker, or about $2,280.” In the U.S. alone, that’s a total annual cost of $63 billion.
On the physiological front, sleep does more than just recharge your body. It removes toxins, rejuvenates memory, spurs creativity, improves both academic and athletic performance, lowers stress, alleviates depression and even extends your life.
In addition, study after study (after study) has confirmed that sleep dramatically improves emotional intelligence and actually makes you a better leader. Of course, chances are you already know most of that. Unfortunately, our common solution to the problem only deepens the issue.
I’ll just catch up on the weekend.
A lot of us treat sleep like a diet. We restrict ourselves during the weekdays and indulge during our “off” times. What seems like a wise move is, in reality, “a counterproductive way to catch up on…