How to Sleep: A Leader's Guide to Daily R&R

It doesn't matter how well you take care of yourself if you can't sleep. And most leaders have terrible sleep hygiene.

We check our phones in the middle of the night or in bed in the morning. We don't prioritize the quality of our sleep or schedule adequate rest. Even when we're tired and suffering for it, sleep still might not come easily.

Why is sleep so hard?

Learning how to structure your rest and align with your sleep cycles will give you the foundation you need to feel good the rest of the day. Your mental alertness will contribute to emotional self-regulation, which means you're more resilient and adaptable when stress comes your way.

Leaders who are responsible for projects and teams that make a difference in the world have a hard time separating from our work. This makes it difficult to create the proper conditions for sleep. We have an overactive sense of responsibility that can be difficult to contain and keep boundaries around.

When our thoughts begin to race in the dark, we run off with them and start to cycle into a negative feedback loop that leads to anxiety and wakefulness. A daily meditation practice is important to create a sense of inner resource that you can return to in moments of overwhelm and anxiety. Nutrition plays a huge part in our emotional self-regulation and the microbiome also has its own circadian rhythm that is easily interrupted by irregular sleep. But alone, these are not enough for good sleep.

We know that rest is important for the body to replenish itself, even as science is telling us more and more about what happens when we sleep. So how do those of us leaders who are prone to overwhelm and anxiety navigate the minefield that sleep can so easily become?

Here are some tried-and-tested tricks that science suggested – and I've found really work.

5 Ways for Leaders to Improve Sleep

1. Keep your phone as far away from your bed as possible.

This means you will need to get out of bed to turn off your alarm, but it's worth it. Break the habit of checking your phone in bed and once you get over your reflex to reach for it, you might notice how much more grounded and restful your bed has become. Now, keep it that way. 

2. No blue screens (at night).

Get a blue light filter for your phone and computer screens. There are glasses that do this too. This makes a serious difference. 

3. Create sleep protocols/rituals.

I'm not going to lecture you about "no screens before bed" because I think that's ridiculous. What about Netflix and reading on Kindle? What I will say is, don't engage in these activities tucked into bed. You want being under the covers, all comfortable like, with your pillows just so, to be a cue for sleeping. The more you can make getting into bed a ritual or repeatable protocol, the more likely your body will get the message that it's really downtime.

4. If you're up, you're up.

Sleep comes in cycles, so if you wake up in the middle of the night and you're up for longer than 10-15 minutes, you're going to be up for the next little bit. Get out of bed, make some calming herbal tea, read something, and try to stay off the Internet because it can distract you from feeling the next sleep cycle come on. As soon as you start to feel sleepy again, after 30-45 minutes or maybe longer, tuck yourself back into bed and give it another try.

 5. Avoid alcohol and food before bed.

I'm a big fan of gentle, reasonable Intermittent Fasting (IF) and have found that food before bed, and especially alcohol, interrupts the quality of my sleep. Give this one a try for yourself once you get good sleep hygiene down, and you'll see what works for you.

Start by trying just one of these tactics for a few weeks. Behavior change takes time, and you'll know when you're ready to layer in another piece of the protocol. Before long, you’ll be clocking solid 8-hour sessions and doing your body and your brain a big favor.

For the record, because I know some of you are biohackers out there, "You can sleep when you're dead," is some the worst advice I've ever heard. It glorifies the extremists who get 2-3 hours a day, and who approach me when I teach in Silicon Valley to spar with me about the science. Seriously. Our bodies aren't built for that. Please, don't try it (or email me before you do).

Giving yourself adequate time to rest and repair is one of the best ways you can resource yourself as a leader. I hope you take your own well-being seriously enough to give yourself the rest you deserve.

Your work deserves support – and so do you.

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