Sleep Is the New Management Flex
For decades, entrepreneurship has been synonymous with sleep deprivation. Treating sleep as a weakness, CEOs and founders have worn the "founder's grind" on their faces—showing off dark circles as badges of honor, and drawing a parallel between exhaustion and commitment. Sleep became optional in the name of business success.
I have worn that badge and know that grind all too well. In my roles as a founder and entrepreneur, I treated sleep as a luxury; it wasn't until I lost the ability to get a good night’s rest that I realized just how critical it was to my performance.
For a long stretch of my career, I woke up every morning at exactly 2:57 a.m. My eyes would open. My mind would start running. And I wouldn't fall back asleep until well after 4:00 a.m., if at all. At the time, I was leading a company, making high-stakes decisions, managing teams, raising capital and parenting a young child. I told myself it was just stress. What I didn't understand then was that the most expensive mistakes I was making as a leader weren't strategic. They were physiological. And I realized that pushing through with little sleep isn't a sign of grit. It's a sign of poor resource management.
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