Sleep Habits of Successful People [Infographic]

Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 3m 730 #sleep

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

Sleep For Success

There are people in the world who absolutely love sleep, who sleep no less than eight hours a day, and wake up feeling refreshed, revitalized, and happy. By sleeping for so many hours, they feel less stressed and that they have accomplished as much as the next person.

Unfortunately, if you are a mother, an entrepreneur, or a person working too many jobs, you probably struggle to find the time to sleep, and rather than falling asleep, usually find yourself passing out, waking up, either to the sound of children getting into trouble or a crying toddler; or having to rush off to work, or the next business meeting.

A peaceful sleep is more of a fantasy than a reality. You find yourself just wanting to take a vacation and that vacation is actually the chance to finally sleep. Even in the times when you find time to sleep, your body is exhausted, but your mind has other plans for you and you find yourself trolling the Internet, Facebook, Netflix, or doing something other than sleeping. You cannot seem to wind down no matter what you do.

In our busy lives, especially if you are an entrepreneur or someone trying to start up a business, the preference is to work nearly 20 hours a day or until your mind gives out and you find yourself waking up, with no memory of falling asleep. I am highly guilty of this myself. I have my primary job, several freelance gigs and side jobs, side projects, some hobbies, and then on top of that, I try to keep up with the latest trends and keep up with reading latest technology articles, work-related articles, and many other articles “in the news”, specifically on Hacker News so that I can get ideas and information for articles I want to write and stay up to date with the latest everything. No sympathy necessary from anyone, as this is my life and lifestyle.

To put it bluntly: Everything is a full time job.

I am sure there are plenty of people out there who are no different from me—the mothers reading this who have the baby on their lap, the programmers sitting at their computers, just reading a few articles before they get into the mindset of programming; the business owners who try to read a few random articles with an open mind; the bloggers who also read other blogs to get ideas for new articles and insights about their own blogs; and of course, my loyal fans and followers of Confessions of the Professions who enjoy an interesting article from me every so often. You all totally get it: As technology has made our lives easier, it has also made us busier.

The reality is that even the most successful people do, in fact, find the time to sleep. There is no reason for any successful person not to sleep. Even if you find yourself working on getting a startup going and you really want to get it going sooner than later, more importantly, you want to do it right. The only way to really do it right is to get enough sleep so that your mind can process everything that is going on. By taking the time out of your busy day to schedule some time to sleep so that your mind and body can rest, you will ultimately notice more mistakes that you could have possibly made, correct them, and make less mistakes, so that everything runs much more smoothly.

Whether you choose a four hour nap or an eight hour sleep, it is extremely important to let your mind get some kind of rest so that your unconsciousness can process and understand everything and reconnect with the conscious mind. We could get into the whole philosophy of the connection between the consciousness and unconsciousness, but that is for another confession.

You can continue making excuses that you will eventually get some sleep once you are successful, but you can also get some sleep before you become successful. If you are going to be successful, you need to process the stages of success along the way by giving your mind the sleep it needs along the way.

This infographic dives into the lives of some of the most successful people and their sleeping habits.

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