Tips to Getting Better Sleep

Foreign.

Hello, good afternoon or good morning, wherever you are dialing in from. I hope you're having a great day. Thank you for prioritizing your own wellbeing today because we have an extraordinary, an extraordinary luminary with us here today. Very excited to be welcoming back Arianna Huffington. As you know, Ariana is the founder of the Huffington Post, and she is also the founder of Thrive Global, a wellbeing platform that we are leaning into heavily right now here at Salesforce. But also, but also, as if that was not enough, she authored this incredible book, the Sleep Revolution, which I have to say has been a big game changer for me. And with that, I will turn it.

Over to the sleep queen.

Arianna. Take it away.

Hi, everybody. I'm so happy we're talking about sleep because I became a sleep evangelist the hard way when in 2007, two years into building the Huffington Post, the divorced mother of two daughters buying into the myth that I was going to be super founder and super mom and managed to do it all and forgo sleep, I actually ended up collapsing, hitting my head on my desk, breaking my cheekbone. And that was the beginning of my journey, recognizing the importance of sleep and recharging. And the world has changed dramatically since 2007. When I started covering sleep on the Huffington Post. We launched a dedicated sleep section, and my own board complained that this was not a serious topic for a political media site. Now, it's hard to read the Wall Street Journal or the Harvard Business Review without articles on the connection between sleep and performance or reading about athletes like Tom Brady and Andre Iguidala and Kevin Duran and how they prioritize sleep. But today, we want to approach sleep not from the angle of performance, but from the angle of immunity. And the data is absolutely stunning, stunning that sleep is truly the foundation in building our immune defenses. And there have been study after study. You know, I covered a lot of them actually in the Sleep Revolution book, which we should make available in the resources afterwards in PDF. And there is an entire chapter on the science of sleep. For those among you who need a lot of hard data to be convinced, please start with a chapter. For those of you who don't need convincing, go to the second half of the book, which is about tips and tools and techniques to help you get a good night's sleep. But one of my favorite studies that is in the book, but it's so relevant right now, has to do with the connection between sleep and the common cold. The University of California in San Francisco, actually, together with Carnegie Mellon I'm going to read the study to make sure I get it absolutely right. Followed the sleep of participants for one week. So test subjects that were then given nasal drops containing the common cold virus, those who had slept less than six hours a night the week before were four times more likely to catch the virus compared with those who got more than seven hours of sleep. This is like a hardcore scientific study with a control group for the skeptics. So given that we are dealing with a different kind of virus, but a virus nonetheless, sleep is absolutely fundamental. And what I'd like to address today is the things that get in the way. The first thing is our belief, the belief that I don't need sleep. And incidentally, let me address that. There is a tiny percentage of population, between 1 and 1.5% who have a genetic mutation and they really don't need seven to nine hours, which is the norm for everybody else. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in that spectrum. Some need seven hours, some need eight, some may even need nine. But with the exception of those who have that genetic mutation, there is a test for that if you are not sure. But I'm sure I don't have it. So what stops us from going to sleep and sleeping in a truly recharging way, especially during a time of uncertainty and anxiety like now, is the high level of stress we're going through. So I want to address a lot of the micro steps we can take in order to help us go to sleep even while we're stressed, because this is kind of the vicious cycle. When we're stressed, it's harder to sleep, and when it's harder to sleep, our resilience is compromised. So we do get more easily stressed, we get more anxious, we get more depressed. So that's the vicious cycle that we need to avoid. So very, very small micro steps, as we did last week, that's the key to everything. So starting with something absolutely essential, especially in the age of the coronavirus, set a clear cutoff point. When you stop consuming coronavirus news and social media and pull together everything that inspires you. This is the time to collect books that are about amazing literature, poetry, philosophy, spiritual traditions, because that helps put everything in perspective. Yesterday at our Thrive all hands, I asked everyone to send me inspiring contents from everywhere, whatever they had read. And it was kind of amazing how people came forward and started sharing them with each other. We can share them with you too, and you can share yours, and we'd love to post them because the truth is that it suddenly helps put things in perspective. I'm going to read you one that I put on my Instagram today, which came from one of our engineers actually yesterday when I said send me inspirational quotes. So he sent this, which is from the Lord of the Rings. I hope you are all Lord of the Rings fans like I am. So here it is. I wish it need not have happened in my time, said Fredo. So do I, said Gandalf. And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And I love this because it has that deep acceptance of things that are out of our control so we can focus on doing our best with the things that are in our control. And so taking these micro steps to help us get a better night's sleep is in our control. The cutoff point with news is key. Another thing is anything you can do to help you relax your brain. So again, science tells us that hot baths or hot showers, whatever you like, that you prolong if you are particularly stressed. And remember, it's not for cleanliness. It's like a purification ritual. It's to be able to like wash away the day and the stresses and be able to go to sleep in a more relaxed way. And also focusing either in the shower, in the bath, or before you turn off the light, on the things you are grateful for again, because that will help you go to sleep faster. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, it will make it less likely that your brain is going to be going on and on over every problem you are trying to solve. Because the truth is that every day, especially now, is a mixture of challenges and blessings. So giving the last scene of the day to the blessings is really key in terms of how you sleep and if you wake up in the middle of the night, how quickly you go back to sleep. Now if you wake up in the middle of the night, please do me a favor and don't go to your phone. First of all, your phone is not supposed to be next to you. Jody, I'm seeing you. What am I going to do? I have to make a pact with your husband. Don't look here.

Nothing to see. I got the phone out of the bedroom for a really long time and then it just snuck back in.

If you think that somebody needs to reach you because something happened at Salesforce that you need to be involved in, get a flip phone. I'm telling everybody who is in a leadership position who may need to be Reached at night, get a flip phone and give your team the flip phone number so you're at peace. If something happens that you need to be woken up for, they reach you. But this thing here is not really a phone. It's a nuclear weapon. It has like every project, every problem, every challenge, everything we're dealing with during the day. And we need to separate ourselves from it in order to truly be able to recharge during the night and then wake up really ready to face whatever life and the day brings. And I wrote a piece in my newsletter which comes every Sunday. We'll put a link in if you want to subscribe about leaders, because leaders right now are the ones who particularly think they can't disconnect because anything can happen. And that's why we need the leadership manual about how they can disconnect without any balls being dropped. So let me mention a couple of other things and then we'll open it up to questions. Realistically, there are going to be nights when even with the best intentions, you are not going to get a good night's sleep. Maybe you have young children that wake you up. Maybe there's a problem that emerges at work you need to handle during those days. As soon as you can, take a nap, even if it's a 15 minute nap. Listen, Winston Churchill did it during the Second World War and he won the war. He even gave them a name. He called them power naps. And he said they gave him like a second day in which he could handle problems. So the ideal time is 20 minutes. But never let the ideal get in the way. Sometimes I'll get a ten minute nap. Ten minutes. You know, it's nothing you can fit it in. And now that everybody's working from home, it's super easy. At least it's actually one of the good things of working from home. Take a nap, which immediately gives you that restorative power. Your brain and your cognitive performance improve, your ability to deal with challenges and your creativity improve. And something that's kind of really hard for those who love their pets. But no pets in the bed with you. You know, pets have their own rhythm of sleeping. And an interrupted sleep because your pet wakes up doesn't help you. And you know the pet is going to be just as happy sleeping on their own. You do it for you more than the pet, right? So just remember, prioritize your sleep. Now, Jodi and I both wear an Oura ring, as does Mark. Jody's is a different color. I think I prefer Jodi's. But Anyway, mine is kind of silvery. Yours is more like coppery, like some.

Sort of a black thing. I honestly didn't think I was cool enough for this. My team, when I was showing them, that was like, which one should I get? And they were like, oh, get the black one. And I was like, I don't know.

So basically, our aura rings are connected with our phones. You don't have to have your phone by your bed. It can be anywhere. And in the morning, it gives us an exact outline of how we slept, how much deep sleep, how much REM sleep, what was our temperature, what was our heart rate variability. It's kind of an amazing chart of your sleep. And you also can see immediately when you didn't get a good night's sleep, how your readiness for the day is affected. So all that may seem like better for another time when we don't have to deal as much, but I promise you it's precisely for a time of crisis, when we need to show up our best, wisest, most resourceful, most empathetic, most creative. All qualities that are compromised and diminished when we don't have enough sleep to recharge. So let's open it up. I'll take any questions you have.

That's great.

Make them as personal as you want. This is just us, right? I love it.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, the other thing that I love about the Oura Ring kind of ties back to what you were saying the other day when you said, hey, if it doesn't work, like, give yourself permission. Give yourself permission to forgive yourself and, like, you'll try again tomorrow. And one of the things that I love about this is if I have a bad night's sleep, the Oura ring I'm talking about, it also gives you recommendations as to how much activity you should have for the day. And for me, like, I love it when it says, I don't love it, but if I miss a night's sleep and then it says, do not exercise today, like you are going to go behind the starting line if you exercise today. So just take it off. And that. That sense of permission to, like, you know, go easy really makes a big difference. It makes a big difference. Catherine, have any questions come in yet? Because if not, I can grill her all day about sleep questions, but I have to be mindful that there's others.

Yeah, go ahead and ask your question. We have only one question that's come in so far, so great.

Thank you.

So I want to know, how much.

Sleep do you need a night I need eight hours. Yeah. And most of the time I make a point to get it. And on the nights when I can't for whatever reason, I do try to get a quick nappy, but most of the time I do get it. What about you?

I need a little more than eight. And what I have been doing lately, which has really made a big difference because it's been hard for me to get a nap in the day, but I am able to get more sleep on the weekends. And so I've been just kind of letting the screens babysit my children on the weekends and sleeping in as much as I can. And then on the weekends if I can get a nine hour day or even, I mean even like a ten hour, if I take a nap as well, I find that even when I look at my OURA ring and the readiness score, like it'll hold on for a couple of days, so. So I definitely try to catch up.

It's like to be creative around it and also when we are conscious of it, we become much more aware of what gets in the way. Like caffeine. Some people are hypersensitive to caffeine. Like as you know, I love my coffee, but I stop at 2:00pm yeah.

Yeah, I can't have any. Like I just had to cut it all out. Like just what about, what do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night? So that was my biggest problem. Like really the phone. Separation anxiety. Like I figured out another alarm. But when I took my phone out of my room and I wake up in the middle of the night, it was like anxiety ridden with like what am I supposed to do with myself right now?

You know what I do? I have an I. Do you remember? You maybe were not born when they existed. There are something called an ipod.

Yes, I was born. I love that you think I'm that young, Arianna, but I think I've got a decade or two on the iPod.

So I have an ipod which has sleep meditations and things that I can play to totally relax me. But seriously, you can get an old phone that you no longer use as long as it has nothing on it except things that help you sleep and meditate. Yeah. The key is it's not the phone. It's poor innocent phone. It's not the problem. The problem is the data on the phone.

Yes.

The social media on the phone. It's CNN and the Huffington Post on the phone. If you have a phone that is nothing, either an ipod or a phone that's scrapped of everything except Whatever it is that you may want to listen to. It could even be like, you know, meditative story that we are doing together with Salesforce. It's perfect for that time of night because it's storytelling. So it brings you in with a great story and then all the mindfulness prompts and meditative prompts and it helps you go to sleep. The key thing is not to try to go back to sleep. So that's another interesting scientific study. In the Sleep Revolution book, they took two groups. They told one group, your job is to go to sleep as fast as possible. And they told the other group, your job is to stay awake as long as possible. The group that was told to stay awake fell asleep first because the sleep is about surrender. Yeah, it's not, you know, and I'm talking here to type A driven people who think they can get anything done. You can't make yourself go to sleep, you know, you have to surrender to sleep. So if I, if I wake up actually in the middle of the night because I'm a meditator, I remember what the Dalai Lama said that he said the best time to meditate is 3am and he actually wakes up and meditates for, I don't know, two, three hours at 3:00am because, you know, it's. The world is quiet, the energy is kind of not as active. So when I wake up, I just say, wow, great. I have infinite time to meditate now. I stay in my bed often, you know, just still lying down, but meditating and I inevitably fall asleep. Yeah. So the key is do not engage with your day, do not engage with your life. Listen to things that are relaxing and peaceful that have nothing to do with work. Meditate if you're a meditator, but don't try to go back to something to entertain your brain. The whole problem is our brains when it comes to sleep, not otherwise.

I like that idea of just don't engage with your day. I think that's like, really, that's really well stated because I do think that's what happens. Like you want to just check the calendar, just check the email, or listen to some news, but that's all. Engaging with the day.

Yeah.

Catherine, tell me about some questions.

Yes, the call for questions worked. We got several.

All right, go, go, go.

Can you bank sleep by sleeping more on the weekends, or should you aim to get the same number of hours each night?

Well, ideally, you need to get the number of hours you need. You need to figure out, are you a seven hour person, an eight hour, or a nine hour and try to get as close to that as you can. As Jodi said, if you don't, the worst thing you can do is judge yourself and feel bad about it all day. Just say that day is gone and there's another day coming up. And there will be times when, I mean, I had to get up super early this morning because I was doing a webinar with a partner, Natura, in Brazil. You have all the problems with time zones, but, you know, I really wanted to do it and if you want to do something, you do it. Then I went back and meditated for an hour and I feel fine. So this is not like something to another thing to be perfectionist about. It's knowing what ideally we need to do to be our best. You know, this whole idea of we are all in this together, it is such a beautiful concept. And the truth is that the first thing that we lose when we're exhausted is empathy and compassion. And that sense that we are all in this together because we move into survival mode, we move into fight or flight. And that's not the place from which we're going to resolve our problems, either as leaders or in our companies or in our families.

Thank you. And then have so many questions rolling in. You mentioned napping, so I guess you're pro napping. But do you have any recommendations for getting up after a nap? Because some employees mentioned that they feel groggy and just want to stay in.

Bed for the rest of the day. Actually, the ideal time for a nap is about 20 minutes during the day. So, you know, if you have a little more time, you can sleep a little more. Set an alarm. It may take you a couple of minutes to get back, but it's restorative. It's unquestionably restorative. And again, if you have trouble getting into the nap, listening to a meditation or to meditative story, just something to relax you and then allow yourself to drift off. And even if you don't go fully to sleep, just that time to disconnect from the world helps recharge you and restore you.

So I have my own question based.

On.

You'Re talking about, you know, using meditative stories to fall asleep. I always use some sort of noise or podcast and white noise machine to go to sleep. But I've heard that it can be bad to keep a white noise machine on all night long, that once you get to sleep that it can be.

Disruptive for your sleep.

I don't know if you have any.

Thoughts on that, not unless it wakes you up. I think people have to experiment. Like if it helps you go to sleep, but then at some point it wakes you up, then that's a problem. But does it wake you up? No. Then go for it. I think, you know, we have to be a little bit of our own scientists here, test things and experiment. And of course it's also really important if somebody has real trouble sleeping or wakes up and is always exhausted in the morning, no matter how long they spent in bed. It's also very important to check if they have sleep apnea because more people than we know have sleep apnea. In the book, I write a lot about it, but that's something obviously not now, but when, when we return to more normal times, you can easily have checked out. And then they now have a lot of easy machines you can use at night to help you sleep and get enough oxygen. That's really the key here. And remember to go back to the immunity question, oxygen is so key right now to build our immune system during coronavirus, especially because the virus attacks the lungs and the respiratory system first and most dangerously. So that's why now we have an extra incentive to make sure. We need to make sure we get all the sleep we need because everything else is affected, including stress eating. Have you heard about the new term, the COVID 19? You know how they talk about the college 15 where people are stress eating, you know, Oreos and chips are up, kale is down.

I could be guilty of that with my potato chips during this time.

So I think what is worse is when we're sleep deprived again. Physiologically our body craves sweets and carbs, so it makes it even harder to exercise willpower and to find substitutes. And those who are kind of drawn to comfort foods as much as possible, try and avoid sugar because sugar is another immunity suppressor. So see, especially processed foods and artificial sugar. So listen, nobody's going to do this perfectly. It's just things to keep in mind as we are making trade offs.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Your advice is so sound and we are just so lucky to be able to call upon you at any time, but especially during this time. So I really appreciate all the time you're spending with us. Arianna.

Sam.