Member-only story
As a busy President of an international org — read: no life and weird sleep times — the single question I get asked most often is about how I do it. How do I find time to write on Medium? How do I stay healthy? How am I not a complete utter mess? (I am. It just doesn’t look like it.)
Every time I’m asked for time management or life advice, the single best tip I have for people is this: Sleep well and sleep quickly. Learn to sleep in five minutes or less. Learn to sleep soundly. Learn to fall asleep anywhere.
In America today, 35% of adults get fewer than seven hours of sleep a night, lack of sleep is causing a myriad of health problems, and a 2015 Harvard study showed that the average worker loses 11 days of productivity every year over sleep issues. (I suspect it’s actually a lot higher.)
I, on the other hand, don’t. I sleep eight hours a day, every day, or more if I need it. I might work more than eighty hours a week, have hundreds of emails I work on until one in the morning, and have basically no free time, but sleep? I never sacrifice it.
I found out about sleep tricks years ago when working with veterans at the Department of Defense and the National…
