In this episode, we discuss how sleep is important for planning out your day.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how tired minds don’t plan well. First sleep, plan later. This is a quote from Walter Riesch who is an Austrian screenwriter and director back in the day. As someone who is creative and comes up with a lot of ideas myself, I realize that sleep is so crucial to helping me come up with everything.
Do this podcast every Monday through Friday requires a lot of mental energy and I strive to get eight to nine hours of sleep a night. I went out Friday night and only got about five hours of sleep last weekend and the next day I tried to write and do other things, and I didn’t have it in me. So I just went to sleep at 9 pm and work up at 9 am the next day. Then I was ready to write. I had to write an extra episode because I missed out on the previous day but I was ready for it.
When you miss out on one hour of sleep a night, you decrease your brain functionality by 14 percent. And that’s a lot. That basically means you’re operating at a B level and today’s economy you need to be operating at an A level. To help me sleep better, I also stopped drinking coffee. I noticed that I wasn’t sleeping very well and it was affecting my performance. I do miss my nitro brew and I will only drink coffee about once a month now. Now it’s green tea and peppermint tea. At least my breath should smell better now.
I know I do my best work when I sleep well. I feel like I also have better discipline when I get a good night’s sleep. I’m able to write faster and do other work because I don’t feel like I’m running on a flat tire. At my last firm, I made my own schedule for seeing clients and doing my work, so if I was feeling sleepy and didn’t have a client for a while, I would just go take a nap in my car and made sure to set an alarm. It might be for 15 minutes or an hour. It just depended. Also if I went to go see a client for lunch, sometime I would just park my car and go to bed. Then when I went back to work, I would do what I needed to do. I made my own hours and if it meant that I had a client meeting at 6 pm, I was going to take a nap because I didn’t want to fall asleep during the client meeting and it helped me pay attention to the meeting more.
I can’t do financial planning well if I’m tired. I might miss something that is crucial to the client so this is why I value sleep. I will forgo something so I can get some more sleep in my day. I love taking naps because it just makes me feel more alive afterward. Plus if I’m operating at 100% every day Monday through Friday and I’m going against someone else that is operating at 84% then after one month I’m going to do about 308% more work than that person. Going back to my tire analogy. If I was on a bike that had tires properly inflated, I’m going to travel so much farther than the other person in a month, and in a year, I won’t even see that person when I look back. And this is assuming we are equal in every other part except sleep.
I know I’m in good shape and so I know would be operating at 100% or close to it. I refuse to do all-nighters if I can. I rather plan something out and then decide if I can fit it into my schedule. Since I know what I have to do, then I can say no to the other things in my life and will harm my performance. If you do decide to stay out, just make sure you make up your sleep the next day. You’re not going to do your best work if you treat your body like a rental. This body is the only vehicle that will carry yours through life. You don’t want to have major engine issues in your 40s or 50s.
So do things that will help you go to sleep. So don’t watch television before you go to bed, eliminate electronics from your room, and stick away from alcohol and caffeine after a certain time. Plus also get blackout curtains. Those are a lifesaver.
Just imagine is you can start planning out your day better and are better able to execute on those plans. You’ll be unstoppable in a year. If you want more control over your life, then bring more discipline into your life by the way you sleep and take care of other parts of your body.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, tired minds don’t plan well. Sleep first, then plan. This will ensure that you’re a well-oiled machine that is less likely to break down. You don’t want to be constantly sick and tired, after a while you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. To not get to this point, take care of your body and make sure you get some sleep. This will ensure that your brain is operating at 100% versus 86% and if you want to make it far in life, you want to be operating at 100% as much as possible.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is your quality and quantity of sleep. Not all sleep is created equally and you want the deep rem sleep. So you might need to get a device to record your sleep. When you operate at 86% or lower because of a lack of sleep, what happens is that you just get used to this level and it seems normal but it’s not healthy and you could do better. Once you start operating at an A level, you’ll notice the difference and you won’t want to go back to being a B or C player.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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