Arianna Huffington: We Take Better Care of Our Smartphones than We Do Ourselves

“Oh, I had a triple shot of espresso this morning because I was up so late last night trying to finish that project!”

“Yaaaaaah! I haven’t had more than 3 hours sleep per night the last week. I really have no time man!”

Sounds familiar? If you’ve never had a conversation with a friend or colleague comparing notes on how little you’ve slept, you must be greatly sheltered. I know I’ve had this little quite a few times since I started competing in the rat race. Sleep was expendable, success was everything.

That was until we came across this Elite Daily video interview with Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington. She talked about the exact same problem we were having with sleep deprivation, and gave us some perspective on how serious this problem actually is.

The Good Bits from the Interview

• “We’ve been living under a collective delusion where eliminating sleep from our lives is a sort of express elevator to the top.”
• “There’s overwhelming scientific evidence showing that lack of sleep is tied to numerous diseases – heart disease, high blood pressure, and even Alzheimers disease”
• “My definition of success changed over 7 years ago, when I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout and sleep deprivation. The biggest change I made after my collapse was my sleep. I went from getting 4 to 5 hours sleep to getting  7 to 8 hours sleep, and that has sort of transformed everything.”
• “We take much better care of our smartphones, than of ourselves. Like on my iPhone, I get alerts, 20% of battery remaining. When I collapsed, there must’ve been below 0% battery remaining but I didn’t even know it!”
• “We begin to forget what it’s like to be fully recharged, to be in the zone.”
• Arianna Huffington established nap rooms where employees could go have a quick snooze and recharge in the middle of the afternoon.

HealthWorks’ Take on This

As young people, we’re often told that these are our golden years to charge forth and do whatever we can to succeed. We work our hardest, and we give our 110%. And people admire us for that. What we don’t realise is that that extra 10% has to come from somewhere, and most likely we’re taking it from our health. At the end of the day, in the big picture, is it worth it?

Lack of sleep won’t feel like it’s hurting you right now. In fact, you might not even feel tired. Your body could already be overworked but still feel okay since you continually fuel it with caffeine and sugar. But in the long run, not getting enough sleep could really take its toll on your health.

It is a problem today where “relaxation” is seen only as the luxury of the lazy. We don’t think so. You need to recharge in order to continue doing the things that you love. This is because we are not robots (but then again, even robots need their juice).

What to Do About It

Simple. Get more sleep. Iron out your daily routine and try not to sacrifice sleep for anything else. Start by adding 15 minutes more sleep into your schedule, and gradually up it till you get enough zzzzs. Here’s how to figure out how much sleep you need.

And not to leave you hanging, here’s the video:

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How much sleep are you getting a day? How do you plan to change that? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page!

Written by: Jolene Foo