FT: Improving sleep, management philosophy, and dinner times
3 ideas for the weekend ahead.
Happy Friday,
This edition of forward thinking is a 3-minute read with ideas exploring:
How to Improve Your Sleep Efficiency
The “Amp It Up” management philosophy
Average Dinner Time in America (chart)
Improving sleep
Falling asleep has never come easy for me. On certain nights, it takes me an hour to drift into sleep. The amount of time laying in bed is measured by a sleep efficiency score.
Sleep efficiency is dividing “time slept” over “total time in bed”. It’s the gold standard when it comes to sleep issues.
For example, one person is asleep for 7 hours but spends 9 hrs in bed. While another person is asleep for 6 hours but only spends 6.5 hours in bed.
What causes someone to toss and turn for 2 hours?
Usually an overactive mind. Our brains like to problem-solve and worry in bed. Mine does. And this comes automatically the minute my head hits my pillow.
Tackling major life problems in bed is a fruitless endeavor though. Problems are better fought during waking life.
So what can we do?
One thing I’ve learned about falling asleep is its counter-intuitive nature. There is no such thing as “trying” when it comes to sleep. Sleep happens. You never know when you fell asleep and good sleepers can’t tell you how they do it.
And more time in bed isn’t better. It is worse. Treating those with insomnia isn’t to focus on sleep but on efficiency.
And the best way to improve this metric is to get out of bed early and often.
Our brains are good at association. It learns getting into bed is the time to problem-solve and reflect on the day. This is called conditional arousal.
The only way to break the condition is to get out of bed when it’s obvious that sleep isn’t happening.
Our emotions are heightened in bed which causes an increase in the magnitude of our problems and worries. This is in part due to periods of light sleep which we don’t notice. The minute we get out of bed the emotions and thoughts disappear.
Two pieces of advice if you have issues falling asleep at night and want to try this.
Change your attitude about staying in bed. Do not negotiate. The minute your mind starts to race get out of bed. Go back to bed when you feel tired.
Do any activity that relaxes you when out of bed. I use an adult coloring book or I meditate.
The “Amp It Up” Management Philosophy
One of my favorite online writers David Perell has an insightful article on how he manages his company using the “Amp It Up” philosophy.
Lots of highlights but this part stuck out.
Focus goes against our human nature. Most teams are scatter-brained. They refuse to commit and spread themselves thinly across too many priorities (many of which are ill-defined). Your job as a leader is to direct people to what’s ultimately important.
Narrow focus is also the result of clear thinking. It’s the leadership’s job to distill things down to their essentials. If leaders can’t communicate priorities at the top, how distorted will the thinking be for the rest of the team?
Average Dinner Time in America
As a kid, our family ate dinner around 8 pm. As an adult, I now feel weird eating dinner anytime before 7 but I am in the minority.
Where does your dinner time compare to the average American household?
Thanks for reading!
Irfan
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