Sleep Smarter – Shawn Stevenson (2014)

Shawn has long been one of my favourite podcasters, and I originally came across him not long before the publication of this book.  For Shawn, sleep is the foundation stone for all performance, work, home, sport, creative – everything!  As he describes it sleep is the ‘force multiplier’ for all other areas, it underpins, or undermines, all other initiatives we might put in place to develop ourselves.  Without enough sleep (both in quality and quantity) we are less able to benefit from our nutritional intake, our learning and reflection investments, our relationships and our capabilities both innate and developed.

What Shawn offers here is a collection of recommendations, based on an extensive curation of research from around the globe.  All of these are able to be deployed quickly and easily, some are transportable, some require a small modification of your sleep space or daily routines – but all are immensely beneficial and have a compounding effect.

For me, having read this book I picked a handful of those which I felt could be implemented immediately, making my sleep space darker, removing my phone from the bedroom and having a enforcing a rule of no caffeine after midday.  More of the additional suggestions, I’m now up to habitually or regularly using 15 or the 21,  have come over time (grounding, nutrition founded around sleep optimisation), longer tech-free period, blue-light glasses) and I’ve also found that many of my Coaching clients have been able to rapidly deploy some of these, and others from the list to immediate benefit.

This will be of interest for leaders;

• Seeking to improve the quality of their performance with better sleep
• Seeking to improve their sleep quality with quick, easy to adopt strategies
• Leaders looking to progressively improve their sleep over time, or significantly very rapidly

You can also see more information on Sleep strategies my posts in the Leadership Wellbeing area of our Insights https://www.4igroup.com.au/insights/