TN50#126, The Nuances of Sleep, 31 July 2023

Hi Team,

Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #126.  I like to think of personal performance in 3 components: physical, mental and emotional.  My frameworks focus on 4 Buckets: Eat, Sleep, Move and Think.  This blog is my sandbox for sharing information that you might find useful for your personal performance.

Have you ever thought, “Man, I wish I didn’t sleep so good!”?  Me neither.

How about, “I’m doing EXACTLY what Dr. Andrew Huberman’s sleep checklist says to do and it’s working perfectly, 10 out of 10!”?  Me neither.

Like a lot of things in life, there’s a whole lot of grey in the black and white world of sleep performance.

The nuances of SLEEP are real.

You can do everything “right” and still have a restless night in bed.  I’ve had client’s who can’t use a sleep tracker because a couple nights of bad sleep scores will make their sleep scores even worse. And some of the expert’s “must does” are “won’t does” for some folks.  And here’s the good news: it’s ok.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone should know and follow a solid set of basic principles for getting good sleep that involve: environment, pre-bed rituals and minding the clocks (light, electronics, food).  And, of course, good sleep is a game changer for people who don’t normally sleep well but we all have phases in life when getting 8 hours of sleep just isn’t possible and for some the only way to initiate sleep requires having the tv on with a 30-minute auto off timer set; and it’s ok.

The nuances of SLEEP are real.

Going Deeper: I’d like to introduce you to a new podcast that my friend Spencer Nix started producing about 3 months ago, called BPR, which stands for: Behavior and Performance Research.  Spence and his team are doing amazing things down in Dallas, Texas; you definitely need to check them out, HERE.

Last week Spencer spent about 25 minutes going deep on today’s topic, you won’t find a more relevant summary on the nuances of sleep than this.  The episode page is here.  If you or someone you know is having unnecessary stress over sleep performance or you just want to learn more on the topic put this one in your “next up” list for podcasts and also pass it along.

As always share the post with your team and anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think!

Have a good one, Alex

PS. Do you or someone you know need a personal performance coach, let me know: alex@fpp.llc