Why sacrificing sleep may not be the secret to success

By  Daisy Okoti

Research & Impact Editor

Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

• Success should not come at the expense of sleep, health and sound judgment.
• Social media shows us carefully curated lives, not always the full truth.

What do you do when the people you look up to are pulling you in different directions? A younger colleague came to me with that dilemma last week.

“One says they only sleep for four hours and that the secret to success is sacrificing sleep. This guy sleeps at 11pm and wakes up by 3am to begin working out, reading and getting cracking, according to his social media posts. The other person, whom I also look up to and is also successful, swears by adequate sleep. His life includes seven hours of uncompromised sleep and he believes success sprouts from a well-rested mind,” he said.

Turning to me, he asked, “Are you the kind of person who values your sleep or do you believe I have to sacrifice my sleep if I am to be successful?” he posed.

Unless I have a good reason, I do not play with my sleep. Anything less than seven hours of sleep (I prefer eight) is a problem for me. I told my colleague as much. There are good reasons that I could sleep for four hours such as travel or dealing with an emergency. However, if there was a list of people who willingly sleep for four hours every night, as sure as hell my name would not be on that list.

To answer his question objectively, I directed to what research tells us about sleep. Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep every night to function optimally. Getting little sleep has side effects which include increased risk of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Inadequate sleep over a long period of time also contributes to weight gain and a weakened immune system. And there are reasons for these outcomes but I will move away from the science of sleep.

The bigger conversation we ended up having was about how we choose mentors and whether we should emulate everything someone does simply because we admire their results.

“First of all, you cannot believe everything you see online,” I told him.

I gave him a healthy dose of skepticism which is hardly surprising considering my profession. “Just because he says he sleeps for four hours every night it does not mean he actually sleeps for four hours every night. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But in this age of social media where you are more likely to meet half-truths than full truths during your scrolls, take that assertion with a pinch of salt,” I told him.

In the digital age, we have both the fortune and the misfortune of what we assume to be ‘front-row seats’ in the lives of people we admire. But let us think for a minute about our posting habits on social media. While we create the impression that we are posting about our ‘real lives’, there is always some level of curation to the content that we put out.  Even the most basic posts we do come from a process of elimination.

There is a story behind the photo we choose not to post; and that line we delete before clicking ‘post’. The influencers and celebrities we look up to also apply this process. As natural as the posts and video clips appear, they are hardly the impromptu wise words of a benevolent achiever that you imagine them to be.

Choosing mentors 

The second conversation we had was about choosing mentors. Just because you admire someone, it does not mean you have to do everything like them. There are restaurants in this Nairobi I only go to for their dawa. They have a special skill at making that beverage. However, you would never convince me to have a nojito at the same restaurant; I have a different restaurant on speed dial for my nojito.

I told this colleague it was possible for him to pick other qualities that did not include sleeping for four hours if he was really keen on becoming a life student of the guy who did not think much about sleep.

I reminded him that selecting a mentor goes beyond what we admire on the outside. Alignment of value systems with a would-be mentor is important. Additionally, both you and the mentor must have a similar vision of what your life purpose is. This is the only way to ensure they mentor you in the right direction.

Ultimately, both my colleague and I agreed that taking anything, particularly on social media, at face value is a big mistake.