If you believe this sleep myth then you may be accidentally making your sleep worse, according to a top sleep researcher. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillma...ding-to-an-oxford-sleep-psychologist/91178315 One of the unexpected benefits of writing on the internet is you learn what people are secretly obsessed with. What you click on in the privacy of the glow of your phone screen is in some way what you really care about. And I can tell you after writing this Inc. column for 15 years that people are really, really obsessed with sleep. If how many people want to read articles on insomnia and its cures is anything to go by, a whole lot of entrepreneurs really struggle to get a good night’s sleep. The pressures of modern life are likely to blame for plenty of restless nights. The distraction of our screens definitely isn’t helping either. But according to a fascinating recent interview with a top Oxford University sleep researcher, there may be another, less recognized problem that’s keeping many of us up at night: one hugely common and hugely destructive sleep myth. What do hibernating hamsters have to teach entrepreneurs? Vladyslav Vyazovskiy is an unusual guest for Adam Grant’s ReThinking podcast. Usually the Wharton psychologist and best-selling author talks to fellow professors and figures from the business world about how to make work better. But Vyazovskiy is an Oxford sleep psychologist with a lab full of drowsy hamsters who spends his days studying how and why animals hibernate. This is fascinating work, of course. But why is it a fit for a podcast mostly about improving our professional lives? “His work has made me question many of my basic assumptions about slumber,” Grant explains in a recent episode featuring Vyazovskiy. Rethinking sleep might help us approach this basic biological need differently. And that might mean not only more restful nights but also more productive and pleasant days. And Vyazovskiy makes clear there is a lot of scope to reconsider even our most fundamental intuitions about sleep. “Sleep is still a big mystery,” he explains. Scientists can’t reliably induce normal sleep, they argue over how to define it, and can’t even agree on what it’s for. There is one thing Vyazovskiy is confident about when it comes to sleep though. Many non-experts have one big misconception about it that results in them getting less sleep, and lower quality sleep, than they would if they didn’t believe this sleep myth. Your efforts to improve your sleep are making it worse. Entrepreneurs are, in general, strivers, which means when they see a problem they set about trying to fix it. But according to Vyazovskiy this natural inclination to improve our sleep actually often ends up making our sleep worse. When Grant asks him for “favorite recommendation for how to sleep better,” he doesn’t recommend a particular bedtime ritual or sleep-monitoring gadget. Instead, he tells anxious bad sleepers to maybe chill out a little. “Try not to worry about not being able to fall asleep or not getting enough sleep. People may get over obsessed, over worried, and if anything, it gets your sleep worse,” Vyazovskiy responds. The sleep myth that trying to optimize your sleep leads to better sleep extends to supposedly sleep-enhancing technology. ”Be careful with various gadgets that you use to record sleep because most of them are not properly validated. They give you something that may not necessarily be true or easily interpretable. You get some kind of very wrong idea about how much deep sleep you get,” he adds. Prioritizing sleep and appreciating its value are important. Scientists might not understand it fully but they do know it has incredibly essential functions. But taking things a step further and trying to manage or control sleep generally backfires. “I don’t think it’s [the] right way to look at sleep because we don’t own it. We don’t have control,” insists Vyazovskiy. Sleep is like a Chinese finger trap. As an Oxford sleep researcher, he might have impeccable credentials to make the case that trying to optimize sleep often makes your sleep worse. But Vyazovskiy isn’t the first sleep expert to make this case. In the UK Guardian newpaper in 2022, sleep coach Camilla Stoddart argued that nearly everything anxious strivers do to improve their sleep ends up keeping them up. “Unlike almost every other area of life, effort is not rewarded,” she writes. “The more you try, the less you are likely to succeed.” Likening sleep to a Chinese finger trap, Stoddart recommends that rather than fretting and checking your sleep data, you should focus on keeping to a sensible sleep schedule with regular bed and wake times and then accept the ups and downs of your nights with equanimity. If you find yourself awake at 3 a.m., don’t toss and turn miserable. “Do something that genuinely gives you pleasure like listening to a comedy podcast or an audiobook, watching old family videos, or doing Wordle,” Stoddart advises. Similarly, experts insist that if you want to sleep more on planes, the secret isn’t expensive noise canceling headphones or the perfect neck pillow. It’s not worrying too much about whether you’ll sleep on your flight. “If you wake up and are struggling to go back to sleep, don’t fight it,” suggests sleep researcher Leigh Signal on The Conversation. “Take advantage of the in-flight entertainment.” The biggest sleep myth: More effort leads to more sleep. Taken together, all this suggests that the biggest sleep myth holding entrepreneurs back from more refreshing nights might be the belief that working on your sleep works. In just about every other area of life effort is rewarded. But when it comes to sleep, slacking beats striving. Yes, follow sensible advice like avoiding late night caffeine, creating an environment conducive to rest in your bedroom, and trying to keep a regular sleep schedule. But at the end of the day, you can’t brute force your way to better sleep with effort or technology. That’s a myth. In this domain at least, the fastest route to success is actually taking it easy.
Deep seated fear and anger releases stress hormones, your body expects trouble. Trying too hard constantly, it's like overtraining without allowing enough time to recover.
True. And speaking of overtraining, I've had a rough go over the last several weeks with my sleep. I thought it might have been something in my diet, and so I was systematically excluding or limiting some things, including my morning coffee, but that didn't do it. And then I reread an article on overtraining, and noted that over time I had been adding to my routine here and there with additional sets (and not for the first time!). I then took 10 days off. No workouts. When I returned to working out again, I streamlined my routine to its core. And, sure enough, I'm sleeping better again. Not as well as I'd like, but markedly better. It's like I keep making the same mistake over and over again.