Brian Johnson presents his top three books on sleep — Why We Sleep (Matthew Walker), The Sleep Revolution (Arianna Huffington), and Sleep Smarter (Shawn Stevenson) — and distills one life-changing idea from each. He emphasizes that sleep is foundational to health and performance: about 2/3 of adults in developed nations get less than the recommended eight hours; routinely sleeping under six to seven hours markedly harms immune function and is said to more than double cancer risk. Key practical recommendations repeated across the books include a digital "sunset" (turn off electronics at least one hour before bed), prioritizing sufficient time-in-bed (allowing for natural wake-ups rather than emergency alarms), and treating sleep as the start of the next day (shutdown/work-down rituals). Examples and endorsements from high performers (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Tom Brady, Roger Federer, LeBron James) are used to illustrate the performance gains from prioritized sleep.
Questions this episode answers
Two-thirds (2/3).
More than doubling the risk of cancer ("more than double").
He says he needs 11 to 12 hours of sleep.
Eight hours.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time.
Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian hanging out with 500 of my favorite books. 600 plus Philosopher's Notes on that desk there. We're going to continue our top three series. We've covered my top three favorite books of all time. We've talked about ancient wisdom, modern science habits, nutrition, weight loss, and today it's time for Sleep. One of our core fundamentals. Eating, moving, sleeping. My top three favorite books on sleep. We're going to chat about them. My number one favorite idea from each of these books, why We Sleep. Matthew Walker, one of my all time favorite books ever, period. It's the number one book we recommend to our coaches in our Optimize Coach program. Read this book, Change youe Life, Change youe client's life, etc. And then we've got Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington. Why we Sleep, of course, is by Matthew Walker. And then Sleep Smarter by Sean Stephenson. Packed with big ideas, super practical tips, etc. Of course, we've got our Philosopher's Notes and we've got my notes for our chat today. And we've got a prescription pad. Check this guy out. In our Optimized coach program, we have a prescription pad that we share with our coaches so they can share with their clients. We don't write the prescription, our clients do. What fundamental do you need to rock? Oh, I need to turn off my electronics earlier tonight. Good idea. That each of these books talks about. All right. As always, quick little context for those who do not know yet, you can go to Optimize Me and get a free two week trial and access to all 600 of those philosophers notes, distilling the best big ideas, thousands of them, any one of which could change our lives. From those different books in the Philosopher's Notes, we also have optimum 101 classes you'll get access to. You can also go to optimize me top three to follow along, we've got 30 of these top three episodes. But today, Sleep why We Sleep is our number one. Why is it our number one? Well, as we discuss in this philosopher's Note, first I'll give you a stat. Matthew walker tells us 2/3 of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep. I doubt you're surprised by this fact, but you may be surprised by the consequences. Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. You want to Double your risk of cancer. Keep on getting less than six or seven hours of sleep a night. And he talks about the fact that some people are like, oh no, I don't need that much sleep. And he says, okay, cool. How about this? It is far more likely that you will be struck by lightning, the lifetime odds being 1 in 12,000. Then being truly capable of surviving on insufficient sleep, thanks to a rare gene, you need more sleep than you think. And the amount of time you spend in bed, by the way, is not how much sleep you're getting. You need to times that by like 0.85 or 0.9 to get a sense of how much sleep you're actually getting. Anyway, the number one idea from this note, we talk about how sleep is universal. That's good. And we go on and we talk about some crazy stats. 17,000 studies, right? We talk about how reading via an iPad at night messes you up. We talk about the fact that at time change, 1.5 billion people either go spring forward or fall back depending on the time change. Did you know that heart attacks go up or down depending on whether you got or lost an hour of sleep? True. Traffic accidents as well. It's crazy. But the thing that I want to share here, I'm not finding where the actual quote is, but he basically tells us, Matthew Walker does that sleep is the very foundation of our well being. He used to think it was a pillar, eating, moving, sleeping. Then he realized, no, no, no, it's so powerful. It's the very foundation on which the other pillars rest. And of course we have that. If less than eight hours, then you doubled your risk of cancer. Those are big ideas. We need to take our sleep seriously. Literally, life changing. The other idea I love from this book, he quotes somebody who says that a good night of sleep is like walking over a bridge from despair to hope. But the reality is that's a two way street. Two way bridge. A bad night of sleep, you can go from hope to despair. And I say this all the time in our work in general and with our coaches. I'm a different person with five, six, I never get five. But with six hours of sleep, six and a half hours of sleep even. I'm a different person at that than I am at seven and a half, eight, eight and a half hours of sleep. Completely fundamentally different person. Why we sleep. Thank you. Matthew Walker. Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Check out the note, check out the book, etc. The second Top Sleep book is Arianna Huffington, Sleep revolution transforming your life One night at a time. As you may know, Ariana just was working so hard and not taking care of herself and prioritizing sleep that she passed out. Bam. Smashed herself, her face against her desk or something crazy like that. Then she became a huge advocate for sleep. This book is a fantastic look at kind of the overview of why sleep matters. Historical overview. She's a brilliant writer and storyteller and she's got some practical ideas. So my favorite idea from this one. So we've got making money because you sleep, where we talk about. Jeff Bezos, wealthiest guy on the planet. He says, I don't function well in less than eight hours of sleep. So I get eight hours of sleep, boom, done. And then sleeping with athletes for peak performance. Pretty funny on that one. Tom Brady, Roger Federer. Roger Federer, one of the most successful tennis players in history. We've got Jeff Bezos there. And then she even quotes Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett says, let's see if I got it here. Yeah. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits. Think about that wealthiest, top five guy, one of the most successful investors, the most successful investor in history. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits. I counsel our community and our coaches. No, no, no, no. Put it up. Be done. Shutdown complete. Digital sunset. Turn off your electronics. Get a good night of sleep. Don't be manic about it and think you need to go chase profits and sacrifice for sleep. Even Warren Buffett doesn't do that. Jeff Bezos isn't doing that. Sleep, it does a body good. We talk about some research done with Stanford athletes and how it improves sports performance. And then Roger Federer says, if I don't sleep 11 to 12 hours a day, it's not right. If I don't have that amount of sleep, I hurt myself. The guy at Wimbledon, when he goes to Wimbledon, he rents two houses. One for his family, one for him. LeBron James, same thing. Tom Brady, he goes to bed at 8:30. He says, the decisions that I make always center around performance enhancement. I want to be the best I can be every day. So he prioritizes his sleep. The final idea there is what's called a shutdown work down alarm versus a wake up. An alarm literally means an emergency alarm. Don't wake up to an alarm. I haven't woken up to an alarm in years. Other than the occasional early flight, which I rarely take. Get up naturally without an emergency triggering your sympathetic, nervous system. The way you do that is you prioritize going to bed the night before. We talked about this in the Habits deal, right? Your day started the night before in our Carpe Diem module in our Optimized Mastery series for our coach program, we spent two months helping you craft a masterpiece day. And I tell our coaches again and again and again, your day started the night before. Get a good night of sleep. Walk over that bridge from despair to hope and to your height, highest self and best creativity. Prioritize your sleep. Which leads us to Sleep smarter. Shawn Stevenson 21 proven tips now this book. This is the Scientist. This is a great storyteller, practitioner, entrepreneur. This is the, you know, podcaster blogger with great tips on practical look. These are just 21 tips to get better. Of course we talk about a bunch of them in the Philosopher's Note. My favorite one. All of them talk about the fact that digital stimulation at night triggers your brain. It gets your cortisol going when your melatonin should be going. And I'm not sure when I came up with the phrase digital sunsets, but basically when the sun goes down at our Johnson House, all electronics go off. The reality is the only source of blue light for millions of years was the sun. Now we can blow ourselves up with our little gadgets, smartphones, etc. All day, every day. And that has an incredibly negative impact on our well being. So again, we challenge our coaches to follow science. In an hour before you go to bed, turn off all your electronics Again. Your day started the night before. You want to carpe diem it. You want to create masterpiece days, which is how you create masterpiece lives. Prioritize your sleep. That's a quick look at my top three why we Sleep the Sleep Revolution, Sleep Smarter. All of which have the Philosopher's notes. Of course, we've got a ton of other sleep resources. Take a nap. Change your life. Sarah Mednick is one of the leading researchers on the science of naps. This one's great PowerSleep. We have a ton of other ones, but these three really get it going. And then we've also got Sleep 101, which you can check out. And of course in our coach program we go off on this again and again and again. Again. Get instant access to all 600 philosopher's notes and 50 masterclasses, including Sleep 101 at Optimize Me and follow along with all the top threes. What are we doing next? Eating, Moving, Sleeping. We're doing breathing next, then focusing, then celebrating, then prospering. Then we're going to continue for 30 of these. That's all I've got for today. Here's to a good night of sleep. What's one thing you know you could do tonight to get a better night of sleep? Remember, your day starts the night before Shut down complete. Be done with work, turn off your electronics at least an hour before you want to go to bed and make tonight awesome so you can make tomorrow even better.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.
Hi, this is Brian. Hope you enjoyed that. Quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optimize, check us out at Optimize Me. The team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus philosopher's notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, etc. And 50 optimal living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand plus optimize ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize Coach Optimize Me for the free trial for the core wisdom Optimize Me Coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.
