PNTV - Power Sleep by Dr. James B. Maas

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, PowerSleep by Dr. James Maaz. Power Sleep, Dr. James Maas. We've got Five Big Ideas which are pulled from the Philosopher's Note, which has a few more, and that was obviously pulling big ideas from this great book. Let's jump in. So Dr. Maaz is one of the world's leading researchers on sleep. He's out of Cornell University. The other day we did one of these episodes on Take a nap, change your life. We're going to do one tomorrow on the power of rest, which focuses on active rest. We've got naps, active rest, and then today we're going to talk about sleep. Sleep is extraordinarily important. We take it for granted in modern society, but it impacts nearly everything in our lives. And the good doctor is very adamant in the need for us to prioritize power sleep. If we want to actualize our potential, optimize our lives, actualize our potential, sleep has to be part of the equation. Now, in the take a nap, change your life session, we talked about an event that happened in 1879. Do you remember what that was? Well, 1879 was the year that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. In 1879, how many hours of sleep did the normal person get on a typical night? 10 hours. 10 hours? 10 hours of sleep? Yeah. For millions of years, we went to bed shortly after the sun set and we got up shortly before the sun rose. Not a big deal. That equals 10 hours of sleep. Introduction of artificial light via something like the light bulb in 1879 dramatically affected our sleep patterns. And again, we talked about this in the take a nap, but we went from 10 hours to 8 hours to less than 7 hours. 6.7 hours is the average night of sleep that is not effective. We've evolved to sleep this much. We're now averaging that much. Not a good equation. Again, everybody does it, but that doesn't make it healthy. Because it's normal does not mean that it's natural or optimal. As Krishnamurti tells us, to be well adjusted to an unhealthy society is not a measure of well being. So to be well adjusted to a sick society is not a measure of well being. We want to pay attention to what our natural, evolutionary, optimal state of sleep is. And again, the good doctor tells us it's 10 hours. So that's our first big idea. The second one Is, are you getting enough? Now, the standard isn't, are you getting 10 hours of sleep? That's what he says is the recommended optimal amount. Wow, 10 hours. That requires some discipline and some focus, right? But he says, look, are you getting enough? We can go through a little list of questions and think about, are we getting enough? Do you get at least eight hours of sleep? If you don't get at least eight hours of sleep, you're not getting enough. Dr. Moz would tell us, if you need an alarm clock to wake up, it's a sign you're not getting enough. If you fall asleep immediately when your head hits the pillow, that's a sign you're not getting enough sleep. And he says that we don't know what it actually feels like to have great energy all day long until we start getting an adequate amount of sleep. So check in. Are you getting enough sleep? If you're like most Americans and people around the world, the answer is no, you're not. Okay, cool. No big deal. Well, how do we deal with that? What do we need to do? Well, Dr. Maaz tells us we want to have absolute synchrony. He says that our lives are rhythmic. Nature is rhythmic, and the most fundamental rhythm that we want to align to is the circadian rhythm night and day. We want to establish synchrony with that rhythm and create routines in our lives. And he says we want to be in absolute synchrony. Not kind of sort of synchrony, absolute synchrony, so that you're going to the bed, going to bed at the same time every night, and you're getting up at the same time every morning, every single day, seven days a week. You don't go nuts on the weekend and then sleep in. That's not synchrony and certainly not absolute synchrony. You want to do your body a favor and get in these rhythms. Our lives, our bodies are meant to be rhythmic. We want to have absolute synchrony with our waking and sleeping patterns. And again, that sounds bizarre simply because no one really does it, but it's huge. And he's an unbelievable advocate about it. Inspires me. We talked in an episode last week in the Compound Effect. We talked about bookending your days. That's a really cool way to create absolute synchrony. The idea was that we want to have AM And PM rituals. We want to bookend our days. It's often tough to figure out what's going to come in the middle of the day. We get taken away by certain responsibilities, but we can create rhythms and synchrony in the a.m. and in the p.m. we want to do that. That's a cornerstone to effective sleep strategies, is figuring out what we can do. That's the same. The rituals, the routines that are the same in the morning, in the evening, to bookend our days and to help us create this absolute synchrony which will help us get enough sleep, which will help us move toward the this idea. We may never come to 10, but we can get to that eight plus mark and feel the vibrancy that comes. It doesn't require caffeine to get jacked up and then some sort of depressant or alcohol to kind of bring us back down or, you know, watching TV or whatever else we do to check out. Alright, so there we go. We're moving through. We've got four golden rules of power sleep. The four golden rules are. One, get enough. Not complicated, but get enough. Two, let's check my notes here. Two, we want to get a regular schedule, which is what we just talked about, absolute synchrony. We want to get enough. We want to make it a regular schedule. Three, we want continuous sleep, right? We want to have one long chunk of sleep. We can also supplement that with the naps that we talked about the other day. And we want to make up for lost sleep. Those are our four golden rules. One, get enough. Two, make it regular. Three, get it in one continuous slot. And four, make up for lost sleep. So if you have a night or two or whatever that you don't get enough sleep, make up for it. And he says, look, you're not going to make up for decades, years or decades of less sleep than optimal in one night. That's like saying you're going to optimize your physical fitness and health by eating healthy for one day. That's not how it works. You need to show up and create new habits and give yourself an adequate amount of time for those new habits to show up and show you benefits. So there you go. Now, moving on to our sleep strategies, the good doctor gives us 20 sleep strategies. Check out the book for more on that. We got some more in the note as well, but this is obvious stuff. It's not like we don't know what we need to do. The question isn't whether we know most of the ideas we discuss in these episodes. The question is, are we going to do it? Are we going to move from theory to practice? So things like exercising, Exercising is a great way to help out your sleep. Not smoking. Smoking, we know, is just not a helpful thing. If you're smoking, you're sub optimal, period. It's a challenge to quit. But if you're committed to these ideas, quit. So exercise more, smoke less, take less caffeine throughout your day, or eliminate it completely. Even better, don't drink alcohol near bedtime. You may think it's helping your sleep, but it's not. Does funky things to your brain. Going to make you wake up feeling lethargic? Not a good idea. He also suggests again, having regular sleep schedules, things like taking a warm bath and then getting out. What happens is your core temperature drops. That helps signal that it's time to go to sleep. So those are a handful of sleep strategies. Think about what you can do to create a deeper level of sleep and why I keep on stressing this whole 187910 hours thing is the first most important thing for us to get our power sleep is to actually think that it's important. We've got to make that cognitive switch that naps are actually good for us, which is what we spent our time on in the other episode when you got to appreciate sleep. It's important because everyone else around us is celebrating. The fact they can get by on a tiny amount doesn't mean that it's the optimal thing to do. So let's make that switch in our minds. Realize that we evolved to get a certain amount of sleep and and almost all of us are getting less than the optimal and let's do something about it. 10 hours getting enough. Absolute synchrony. I love the idea of the book ending of our days. Am, PM rituals. What can you do to create more consistency? He says. Absolute synchrony. And again, seven days a week, going to bed at or around the same time and getting up at or around the same time. Super powerful ideas. We talked about the four golden rules. Get enough, be regular, make it continuous. And what was the fourth one? Make up for lost sleep. That's right. And then we talked about some sleep strategies. So there you go. Power sleep. Quick look at this great book. Get your sleep on. If you're getting enough, congratulations. If you're not, what can you do to take one baby step toward optimizing that part of your life? Hope you dug it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. 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