Sleep Your Way to the Top
Sleep your way to the top. These were the exact words that Arianna Huffington was directing toward me. So funny, yet so true. Or not? Was sleep, the act of getting more of it, a new form of digital leadership tool? If I slept more, could I get more done? It sounded too good to be true.
I looked at my lengthy to do list and thought how large it would grow if I started taking 8 hours of sleep instead of 5. The proposition was boarding insanity; haven’t previous leaders taught us we can sleep when we are dead?! Yet, I looked at myself in the mirror and it wasn’t pretty. My frenetic travel and speaking schedule was taking its toll on my health. A nervous breakdown was eminent and Arianna can be quite persuasive, so … I was going to go for it. The sleep test was on.
Increasing Your Productivity via SleepIQ
Teaming up with SleepNumber they gave me insights on how to get more restful sleep and improve my SleepIQ. While I had the latest digital gadgets for the rest of my life, I soon realized I was currently sleeping on a flip phone. SleepNumber had a new X12 bed which wasanalogous in the mattress industry to when the first iPhone rolled out in the telecom industry. Thanks to SleepNumber I was now equipped with the proper knowledge, funding and equipment to conduct my test.
I was testing several items as they related to my productivity, but topping the list was e-mail productivity. Dreaded e-mail. There is only one question I ask when delivering a keynote performance from stage that elicits a universal response. When asking a crowd “how many would like to receive more e-mail,” in all my years speaking, I have never seen a raised hand. Not one. Dreaded e-mail.
2x Your E-Mail Response Rate
Was it possible to increase my e-mail response productivity by sleeping more? Having interviewed Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh for my book Digital Leader I knew that Tony could process roughly 20 emails in a hour. After much testing I discovered this is roughly what I could do as well.
Later posts will be covering more details and discoveries from my sleep study, but after three months of sleep testing, my results were quite shocking. I owed Arianna an apology. I went from processing an average of 20 e-mails per hour (eph) to 41 eph. By sleeping more I was doubling my productivity! There is more to come on my sleep study in future posts, but if you are still a non-believer, my suggestion is to simply sleep on it.
Discover more from my unique sleep study in this video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHyFPyvY948
Erik Qualman / Best Selling Author & Motivational Speaker
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