Cool, You Sleep Only 4 Hours Daily…So What?

I see this every time…

Someone of importance and influence goes on air, climbs an elevated stage or just has an opportunity to give advice and then he or she tells you that if you sleep more than 4 hours in a day, you’re lazy!

And that hardworking people don’t sleep more than 4 to 5 hours in a day.
I feel that’s just wrong! I used to brag that way, until I saw the light.

Let me explain.

These same guys use the popular quote by Thomas Jefferson to give advice…

“The Sun has never caught me in bed in fifty years”.

To me, that quote means either of two things:

1. Thomas was an early sleeper or
2. He was a ruthless workaholic

I choose to believe the first.

Benjamin Franklin also wrote, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with going to bed early. And doing that helps you rise early enough, even before the Sun, just like Thomas Jefferson.

WebMD says most adults need 7-9 hours for the best amounts of sleep. Hey! Don’t look at me, that’s what the doctor said.

And even the Bible says in the book of Psalms 127:2, “…The Lord gives his beloved sleep”.

So I really don’t get the 4 hour sleep thing. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping that short. Sometimes it is inevitable. But don’t brag about it.

When you brag about sleeping 4 hours daily, you reveal three things about yourself:

1. You use most of your day time hours doing absolutely unimportant tasks, like scrolling through Facebook.
2. You have a faulty to-do list.
3. You plan on dying early.

If you sleep 4 hours, do everyone a favour and keep it to yourself. I also have some 4 hour nights, but to me, it’s a sign that I need to cut down on unnecessary day time tasks and do what’s most important.

Because my goal is nothing less than 7 hours of sleep, consistently, everyday and not sometimes.

Here’s one quote that probably summarises everything here:

“It’s not how much you sleep. It’s what you do when you’re awake.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk (serial entrepreneur and best selling author)

I heard this quote from Gary in one of his many videos a couple of years ago, wrote it down and stuck it on my white board as a constant reminder to get things right.