sleeping your way to success

My good friend and fellow UM contributor Greg Cerveny recently opened my eyes to the notion of ‘free running sleep’, which is basically sleep without unnatural inturruptions (i.e. by an alarm clock).

Although most of us arn’t in a position to fully embrace this concept (Greg, Glenn, you lucky bums) I did come across an interesting article that talks about sleep, and its ability to contribute to our success.

Among the revelations;

• An alarm clock that interrupts your sleep damages your memory, your ability to learn, your mood and temper, your relationships with other people, your ability to focus and your overall intellectual performance
• Sleep is not for rest; rather, sleep is for optimizing the structure of memories
• Naps are highly beneficial to intellectual performance
• Insomnia could likely be cured if “people were allowed to sleep as much as they wanted and go to sleep only then when they are really tired (perhaps 2-5 hours later)”
• Taking a mid-day nap (on your lunch hour at work, for instance) is one of the best ways to insure focus and productivity in the late afternoon

The article goes on to lambast alcohol (blasphemy!), but is realistic in that it offers suggestions for insuring your drinking doesn’t adversely affect your sleep cycle.  It also talks about the effects of exercise on sleep, and a wide variety of other topics.

Interesting reading.

The article can be found here