A report from The Telegraph investigates the sleep habits of successful people and whether or not a lack of sleep is good for business.
Sleep less, work more. That’s the line regularly put out by some of the world’s most successful people, who claim they barely need any shut-eye to get through the day.
The list of non-sleeping high-flyers is lengthy: Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, fashion designer Tom Ford, Pepsi boss Indra Nooyi, and even Donald Trump are all supposed to get by on around four hours a night or less.
Figures such as Margaret Thatcher, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison also claimed they barely needed any sleep.
On paper, it makes sense – being awake for longer means more time to work on that next pitch, or the latest big idea. As Donald Trump has said: “How does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?”
So could this be the secret to success? Should businesses be raising their productivity by cutting their staff’s inactivity?
If it sounds like the business model from hell, that’s because it is. It may seem macho and committed to start early and work late, but anyone looking to take a leaf out of these business people’s book could do themselves – and their business – a serious amount of damage, according to sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley.
