Sleep

Sleep. It’s the secret sauce to optimal living. In this class, explore my Top 10 favorite Big Ideas on how to create consistent, great night’s of sleep to optimize your energy, mood and mojo. We’ll start with why, unpack the kryptonites that get in the way, set some curfews and get you sleeping like a champ.

Matthew Walker is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists and sleep experts. He’s a professor at UC Berkeley (and former professor at Harvard) who has spent decades studying why we sleep and how to, as per the sub-title of this book, unlock the power of sleep and dreams. As you know if you’ve been following along, I’m a HUGE advocate of Optimizing our sleep as a fundamental practice in Optimizing our lives. This book has made me EVEN MORE bullish about the power of sleep. The consequences of chronically depriving ourselves of the sleep we need? Well, they’re astonishingly devastating—dramatically increasing the odds of having everything from mood disorders to cancer (and everything else we don’t want). Big Ideas we explore include the fact that you're more likely to get struck by lightning than have the gene that let's you get by on less than the recommended sleep, the universality of sleep (even worms sleep!!), resetting baselines, the iPad effect (did you know how much using one before sleep messes w/your melatonin?), and some tips to Optimize your sleep TONIGHT!!!

Shawn Stevenson is a health coach who has one of the most popular health & fitness podcasts out there called The Model Health Show. This is a short, quick-reading, funny and practical little book featuring 21 tips on how to optimize your sleep. Big Ideas we cover: #1 tip: value your sleep (it’s the secret sauce), avoid the blue lights, adenosine (did you know how caffeine really works?), staying cool, getting your vitamin G and creating PM rituals.

Arianna Huffington (CEO of Thrive and co-founder + editor in chief of The Huffington Post) went from being a sleep-deprived executive to a sleep evangelist after passing out and banging her head following years of a grueling work! In this book, she brilliantly walks us through the crisis we’re facing, the history of sleep, the science of sleep and, most importantly, what we can do to Optimize our sleep. I highly recommend it. Big Ideas we explore include the fact that sleep is the #1 most underrated health habit, how to master sleeping well, the #1 tip (and #2-4), how much sleep the wealthiest human on the planet gets (hint: target: 8!), how athletes train their sleep (guess what time Tom Brady goes to sleep!), and why you should set a WORK-DOWN alarm so you don't need a WAKE-UP alarm.

Alex Pang is the founder of the Restful Company. In this book, he brilliantly walks us through the science of why rest is an unequivocally essential part of doing truly great work. He integrates the latest findings in neuroscience with compelling and inspiring stories of historical exemplars who leveraged rest to achieve greatness. It’s awesome. Big Ideas we explore include an introduction to your default mode network (aka what your brain does when it's "resting"), your new four-hour workday (that's what the great do), the importance of early starts (and rhythms), why walking and (aerobic) exercise are so powerful for creativity (hint: blood to brain!!), and the importance of deep play (aka making your work AND play one big game).

Want to change your life? Take a nap. Seriously. Nearly all of us are sleep deprived and naps are a scientifically proven way to boost everything you want to boost. Leading scientist Sara Mednicks walks us thru the evolutionary functionality of naps and teaches us how to get our nap on and why we should. In the Note, we'll cover the basics and get you rockin' it like a nap ninja in no time.

Did you know that 65% of us will have trouble falling asleep tonight and be tired tomorrow? And sleep deprivation costs the United States $66 BILLION annually. That’s a lot of people. And a lot of money. Dr. James B. Maas is one of the world’s leading researchers and educators in the sleep world. He’s been at this for nearly FIVE decades and has taught more than 65,000 students and thousands of executives about the importance of sleep. Big Ideas we cover include the top six sleep thieves, the 4 rules of optimal sleep, and finding the time to get that extra hour we need.

How’d you like to “die young” at a ripe old age? Well... This book gives you the how to. Dr. Steven Gundry is a former heart surgeon (plus professor and head of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine) who makes a compelling case for the idea that we need to invest a lot more time Optimizing the most ancient part of ourselves (our microbiome) if we want to extend both our life span AND our health span (aka die “young” at that ripe old age). Big Ideas we explore include genes vs. microbiome (which one matters more?), long-lived peoples (do and don't!), chronic cardio (equals chronic stress), your two brains (head + gut... which one's #1?), and got glymph? (how to wash your brain!).

Sleep. It's powerful. Way more so that you may think. And Dr. James Maas, a leading sleep scientist, gives us the lowdown on how to optimize our sleep for peak performance. In the Note, we'll look at why sleep is so powerful, signs you're not getting enough of it, and some best practices on how to rock it. We'll add a few more zzz's to your zzz's!

Eat Move Sleep. The simple, powerful keys to optimal health and well-being. We talk about these fundamentals ALL the time and this is my new favorite book on health. Big Ideas we explore include 10,008 hours and 36 minutes (the magic # of elite performance), candy for cancer cells, the power of measuring whatever it is you want to improve, how to buy willpower at the store, and a vaccine for the common cold.

Loehr and Schwartz tell us we've gotta manage ENERGY not time if we wanna really optimize our lives. Their book is pure goodness. In this Note, we'll explore the four principles of full engagement, why we want to be more like sprinters rather than marathon runners, that there's a pulse of life and we need to honor it, and the power of positive rituals. And some other really Big Ideas on getting our Full Engagement on.