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The 90-minute sleep cycle rule for high-performance leaders
The 90 Minute Sleep Cycle Rule - How to get the most out of yourself through your sleep.
Did you know that sleep is still at the bottom of the list in today's work culture when it comes to effectiveness and potential for improvement?
In fact, in many companies, getting by on little sleep is part of good etiquette. Sounds like bad etiquette to me. But the promotion of your sleep as a leader, as well as that of your employees, is substantial! If there is too little of it, the immune system cannot regenerate properly in the rest phase, we get sick faster and are more susceptible to burnout. In other words: It harms your company! Nobody needs it!
What we need is resilience, mental fitness and physical as well as emotional resistance. So we know, getting enough sleep is important.
But did you know that there's also an ideal time to go to sleep at night, based primarily on when you need to get up the next morning? If you break down a restful night, it consists of 5-6 complete sleep cycles.
A sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes and is divided into 4 sleep phases:
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the falling asleep phase: here we are still easy to wake up and only sleep superficially.
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the light sleep phase: here we already sleep much more calmly. The heart rate and breathing are calm and regular.
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the deep sleep phase: in deep sleep our body recovers. We recharge our batteries and are very difficult to wake up. Breathing and pulse are at their lowest.
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the REM phase: also called Rapid Eye Movement. The REM phase is characterized by rapid eye movements and vivid dreams. Memory, learning and problem solving are consolidated or strengthened during the REM phase.
Each of these 4 phases is super important to our mental and physical health. Once a full sleep cycle is complete, the body goes through the 4 stages of sleep again. So if you feel "unawake" every now and then in the morning and can't really get going, even though you've had "enough" sleep, take a look at your sleep rhythm.
Many athletes, top managers and especially trucker drivers #safetyfirst apply the 90-minute rule with 5 sleep cycles. It works like this:
🚀 Decide when you need to get up the next morning.
🚀 Now calculate 5-6 sleep cycles a' 90 minutes backwards
🚀 Go to bed at the calculated time
Example: You want to get up at 07:30, go through the presentation again or have a long workshop ahead of you? Then you'll end up at 00:00. Most people fall asleep after an average of 15 minutes. So you should go to bed at 23:45. Here's to more restful sleep and more resources in your workday!
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