Sleep Debt = Hours of sleep you need per night – Hours of sleep you actually get

During a busy week recently, I averaged 5-6 hours of sleep per night, and planned on getting my eight hours of sleep on the weekend nights. After getting less-than-adequate sleep for 5 consecutive nights, I noticed it had started to take a toll on me. By Friday, I felt like I had pulled an all-nighter the night before.

When the weekend came, I slept in and got 10 hours of sleep per night to partially make up for the sleep I had missed over the week. I’m sure many of you have experienced a similar scenario. I had accumulated sleep debt during the week, and I paid it back over the weekend.

Your Sleep Bank Account

The whole idea of sleep debt comes from the analogy of having a sleep bank account, where you can make sleep deposits and debits. This analogy is not perfect, and can be a bit confusing. Here are some caveats to the sleep bank account:

• Current research suggests your maximum sleep debt is 20 hours
• You cannot “sleep ahead” and build up your sleep bank account
• You can only pay back sleep debt in increments of 1-2 hours; If you are 10 hours in sleep debt, don’t expect to pay it all back at once

Losing one hour of sleep per night over a week is equivalent to pulling one all-nighter- here’s an example to explain why:

Sleep Debt Comparison Example: Sarah and Ashley

Sarah and Ashley both need eight hours of sleep per night. Sarah gets 6 hours of sleep on week nights, and 8 hours of sleep on the weekend. Ashley gets 8 hours of sleep per night, except for Thursday night, when she pulls an all-nighter:

At the end of the week, Sarah has 10 hours of sleep debt (56 – 46); Ashley has 8 hours of sleep debt (56 – 48). So both women have similar levels of sleep debt, even though one accumulated the debt all over Thursday night. Their similar levels of sleep debt will give them similar negative symptoms of sleep deprivation:

• Daytime drowsiness
• Mood shifts, including depression, increased irritability, and loss of sense of humor
• Stress, anxiety, and loss of coping skills
• Lack of interest in socializing with others
• Weight gain
• Reduced immunity to disease and viral infection
• Feelings of lethargy
• Reduced productivity

Why not just sleep in on weekends to pay back sleep debt?

You cannot make up for large sleep losses during the week by sleeping in on weekends any more than you can make up for lack of regular exercise and overeating during the week by working out and dieting only on the weekends.

-James B. Maas, Power Sleep

You can make payments of an extra couple of hours of sleep on Saturday and Sunday to pay back part of your sleep debt. But you aren’t likely to be able to pay more than 2 hours at a time. You still have debt left, and this doesn’t get to the root of the problem- you still face symptoms of sleep deprivation over the course of your week.

Calculating the Hours of sleep you need per night

Each individual has different sleep needs- some need 9-10 hours of sleep per night to perform at their best. Others function perfectly at 5-6 hours of sleep per night. Thomas Edison slept three or four hours at night, and regarded sleep as a waste of time. Albert Einstein needed 10 hours of sleep per night to function well.

Note: Before calculating your hours of sleep needed, be sure to review my previous post on do’s and dont’s for better sleep. Caffeine, alcohol, your diet, and exercise habits all play a role in sleep quality.

The Easy (Less Accurate) Way to Calculate Your Nightly Sleep Needs

If you feel drowsy during the day, you probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Try going to bed earlier and see if you feel alert the next day. If you do, this is your nightly sleep need.

The Accurate Way to Calculate Your Nightly Sleep Needs

1. Select a bedtime at least eight hours before you need to wake up
2. Maintain this time for a week and keep track of the time that you wake up
3. If you feel drowsy or don’t get up easily to your alarm, go to bed thirty minutes earlier than usual
4. If you feel alert, try to cut back fifteen minutes and see if you still feel alert to confirm if this is your correct number of sleep hours

Calculating your Sleep Debt

Take your nightly sleep need, and subtract it by the amount of sleep you actually got. The number that remains is your sleep debt:

Sleep debt = Hours of sleep you need per night – Hours of sleep you actually get

Paying back sleep debt

You cannot replace lost sleep all at once. If you lose two nights of sleep you will not sleep for fourteen or sixteen additional hours on the third night. When you sleep longer to catch up, try to do so by going to bed earlier than usual. Otherwise your normal waking time will be shifted. This is likely to make it difficult to get to sleep at the usual time the following night.

-James B. Maas, Power Sleep

As Dr. Maas mentions in Power Sleep, you should pay back your sleep debt by going to bed earlier than usual. This way, you can maintain your normal waking time. You can also use a nap to help you pay back your sleep debt. But make sure you take your nap in the early afternoon, as late-afternoon napping will shift your biological clock, making getting up in the morning a struggle.

Avoid accumulating new sleep debt

After factoring how much sleep you need, and repaying your sleep debt, factor it into your daily schedule. Create a daily ritual (see my creating daily habits post) of going to bed and getting up at the same time, each day of the week. This will ensure you do not accumulate new sleep debt.

This post is part of the Sleep Evolver Series


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The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.
-Edgar Watson Howe

You spend one third of your life sleeping. This one third has significant effects on your waking life, in terms of productivity, energy, alertness, creativity, memory, body weight, mood, safety, and good health. Here are 10 sleep hygiene do’s and don’ts for better sleep:

1) Sex

Do: Have pleasurable sexual relations or masturbation before bedtime. Researchers have found that this can promote sleep onset and induce deep and restful sleep.

Don’t: Have un-pleasurable sexual relations before bedtime. If sexual experience leads to dissatisfaction, anxiety, or performance concern, it will be detrimental to a good night’s rest.

2) Exercise

Do: Exercise to stay fit, reduce stress, and induce deeper sleep. Exercise elevates your body temperature, and an ensuing drop in body temperature at bedtime will induce drowsiness and deeper sleep. The best time to exercise for better sleep is in the late afternoon or at noon-time. Exercise in the morning has little effect on the quality of your sleep.

Don’t: Exercise within three hours of bedtime. This will stimulate the release of adrenaline, and you’ll be too alert to relax and fall asleep.

3) Eating

Do: Eat a light snack high in carbohydrates and low in protein if you are hungry before bedtime.

Don’t: Eat a large or heavy meal within four or five hours of going to bed. This may make you drowsy initially, but you will toss and turn during the night.

4) Drinking

Do: Cut back on liquids of all kind before bedtime. This will ensure you don’t interrupt your sleep due to a full bladder in the middle of the night.

Don’t: Drink any caffeinated beverages within six hours of your bedtime. Stimulants such as caffeine will delay sleep onset and disturb REM sleep. Additionally, avoid drinking alcohol within three hours of bedtime if you expect to sleep well. The common practice of “having a nightcap before bed” actually suppresses REM sleep, and you will experience early-morning awakenings.

5) Nightly Ritual

Do: Create a nightly ritual of reading for pleasure before turning off lights. Use a reading lamp that can be gradually dimmed, and take your mind off the day’s worries. Also, try taking a warm bath before bed. After the bath, your body temperature will plummet (if you have a cool bedroom), and this will initiate sleepiness and more deep sleep.

Don’t: Create a ritual of stay in bed longer than you need to get sleep. Staying in bed too long will promote shallow and disturbed sleep.

6) Sleep Schedule

Do: Establish a regular sleep schedule. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that if you alert your sleep schedule by even a few hours, your mood deteriorates.

Don’t: Sleep in on weekends. This does not help overcome sleep loss during the week any more than overeating during the week would be helped by dieting on the weekend.

7) Sleep Position

Do: Sleep on your side, with the spine straight; or on your back, maintaining the primary curvature of the cervical spine.

Don’t: Sleep on your stomach or with your head elevated. This can give you aches and pains, and is not recommended by medical experts.

8) Napping

Do: Take a nap of fifteen to thirty minutes in duration, if your hectic lifestyle doesn’t permit you to get enough sleep at night. Set an alarm for 15-30 minutes, as any time longer than that will put you in deep sleep, and you will wake up terribly groggy.

Don’t: Take a nap if you are already getting adequate sleep during the night. Additionally, don’t take late-afternoon naps, as this delays your falling-asleep time in the evening and will begin to shift your biological clock.

9) Pets

Do: Sleep with a stuffed animal if it comforts you.

Don’t: Sleep with your pets. Their movements and noises during the night or early morning can disrupt your sleep.

10) Your Bedroom

Do: Use your bedroom for sexual activity and sleep. If you watch television in your bedroom, focus on comedy as a tension reducer.

Don’t: Use your bedroom for arguing, watching exciting/violent television shows, eating, or working.

This post is part of the Sleep Evolver Series


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I’ve been researching and experimenting with sleep a lot lately, and decided it would be fun to write a sleep series for Life Evolver. So here it is- a new sleep post will be added every few days this week. Enjoy!

Sex for a Good Night’s Rest? 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Better Sleep

How to Pay Back your Sleep Debt, the Smart Way

How to Become a Late Riser: 5 Reasons Why Sleeping In Every Day Will Boost your Productivity

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Mastermind Group: A powerful alliance between people who support each other on the road to success.

Napoleon Hill formally introduced the idea of a mastermind group in his classic book Think and Grow Rich. In it, he describes a mastermind group as “The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.” Many famous entrepreneurs, such as Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison, were known to have their own mastermind groups, which were critical to their success. Mastermind groups bring together a synergy of energy, commitment, sharing, and brainstorming that you cannot get otherwise.

For several weeks now, my coworkers and I have held weekly mastermind group meetings over our lunch break. This has been a great way for each of us to stay accountable to our personal goals, help each other by sharing knowledge and brainstorming, and share our personal networks.

5 Reasons to Start a Mastermind Group Over Your Lunch Break at Work

1) It’s like having your own personal board of directors

In a mastermind group, the agenda belongs to the group, but each person’s participation is key. Your peers give you feedback, help you brainstorm new possibilities, and set up an accountability system that keeps you focused and on track. You create a community of supportive colleagues who will brainstorm with you to move the group to new heights. You gain tremendous insights, which can help improve your business and personal life. In a real way, your mastermind group is like having an objective board of directors.

-Joe Vitale and Bill Hibbler, Meet and Grow Rich

Being part of a mastermind group is like having your own board of directors. After meeting once a week over lunch, you’ll notice that you have a lot less trial and error due to running new ideas by your mastermind group beforehand.

Example from my group: I discussed what I eventually wanted to do with my side business to other group members- I received a couple great ideas I hadn’t thought of, implemented one of them, and it has helped out tremendously.

2) Knowledge sharing and The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki explains that the group has a larger intelligence than any individual member:

If you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you’re better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.

-James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

Your group will have knowledge and experience in different fields, allowing you to overcome your lack of knowledge in certain areas. Likewise, you will be able to help other group members in areas where you are an expert.

Example from my group: One member of my mastermind group has a very successful real estate side business. Another member just moved, and is considering renting out his old house. There have been significant benefits to information sharing between these two members.

3) Staying accountable to your goals

This is one of the best reasons for starting a mastermind group at work. During each meeting, you give yourself a homework assignment. The group members can keep you accountable to your homework assignment, along with your long-term goals, such as losing weight, starting a new business, writing a book, or getting into the real estate market.

4) Sharing personal networks

Mastermind groups multiply the size of your personal network.

Example: One group member might mention that they are interested in writing a novel, but don’t know how to get it published. Another member has a cousin that recently had their book published, and offers his cousin’s contact information.

5) Holding the group meetings over lunch is a time saver

By having a mastermind group at work over lunch break, you are not spending your time meeting during an evening or weekend. This also keeps the meetings more consistent.

These five reasons alone aren’t enough to get you started- based on my own experience, you’ll need these 4 tips to help you start your own mastermind group at work:

4 Tips for Starting a Mastermind Group at Work

1) Choose a diverse group of individuals

Compared to a normal mastermind group, the individuals that join one at work will be less diverse. Diversity is one of the keys to success in any mastermind group, so try to find people with different ages, different backgrounds, and different personality styles. If possible, each member should be from a different department or have a different area of expertise at work.

2) Choose individuals you can trust

Trust is fundamental to the success of any mastermind group. Coworkers may become worried that you will share their personal goals with other coworkers, or use it against them in the workplace. Make sure you choose group members that trust each other, and set ground rules beforehand that you won’t talk about each other’s goals with others outside of the group.

3) Meet once per week, and let each person talk for 15 minutes

Meet over lunch at the same time each week- block the time off on your calendar. Choose a group coordinator, who will be in charge of making sure each person gets 15 minutes to discuss what’s on their mind, and get feedback from other members. The group coordinator should also record each person’s goals, to keep the person accountable at the next meeting.

4) Keep the size of the group small

Normal mastermind groups ideally have 5-6 members. But mastermind groups at work need to be half that size. If you are meeting over lunch break, and each person is talking for 15 minutes, then the group should be no larger than 3-4 people. My group currently has three members. Any more than that, and we would be rushed to discuss each member’s goals.

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The best quitters are the ones who decide in advance when they’re going to quit.

-Seth Godin, The Dip

Remember the old advice, “Winners never quit, quitters never win”? It’s wrong. In fact, winners quit often- as entrepreneur and marketing guru Seth Godin explains, “to stick with something in an absence of further progress is a waste.” In his short book The Dip, Godin provides a simple framework for looking at anything you do in life, and deciding when to quit. He uses three patterns to describe situations you could be facing in your life (e.g., your career, an exercise routine, relationships):

Three Patterns You Could Be Facing in Your Life

The Dip: The most difficult part of the journey- “the long slog between starting and mastery.”

Example: A new business that hasn’t quite taken off yet

The Cul-de-Sac: The plateau. You put in a lot of time and energy, but you still don’t end up anywhere.

Example: Dead-end job

The Cliff: The peak and drastic descend. Your future efforts, even when greater than past efforts, won’t be enough.

Example: Smoking

Strategic Quitting

If you are in a cul-de-sac or cliff situation (above), these both lead to failure so you should quit. You have finite time and energy, and should use it towards parts of your life that you can be excellent at. If you are in a dip situation, you need to decide under what circumstances you will quit. Strategic quitting is when you decide to “outline your quitting strategic before the discomfort sets in.”

Using Strategic Quitting When Setting Goals

I decided to implement strategic quitting when I set new goals for myself. For each new goal I set, I now keep track of “Circumstances in which I will Quit.” This way, I will ensure that I am quitting something for the right reasons, not because of stress of the moment. It also helps me decide if a new endeavor is even worth committing to if I cannot commit to the “Circumstances in which I will quit.”

Here are a few examples of how to you can use this method in your goal setting (assuming you are in a dip pattern):

Example 1) Starting a new business

I will continue working my hardest on this my new business unless I am still unprofitable after X time.

Example 2) Maintaining your exercise routine

I will exercise X times per week for the next X months, unless I get injured.

Example 3) Doing your best at your job/career

I will continue doing my best at my current career, unless it has a significant negative impact on my health and/or professional/personal goals.

Example 4) Making an investment

If this investment loses me more than X%, I will sell it (could do this systematically if it’s a stock using a Stop Order).

The Benefit of Using Strategic Quitting When Setting Goals

The main benefit of using strategic quitting when setting goals is that you will begin giving your all in whatever endeavor you get involved in, versus coping:

Coping is what people do when they try to muddle through… The problem with coping is that it never leads to exceptional performance… All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy. If the best you can do is cope, you’re better off quitting. Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you up to excel at something else… Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.

-Seth Godin, The Dip

Strategic quitting allows you to focus your energy on doing your best, versus that gray area where you aren’t doing your best but you aren’t quitting.

Three questions to ask yourself before quitting: Am I panicking, who am I trying to influence, and what sort of measurable progress am I making? These will help you determine if you are quitting for the right reasons, or simply quitting because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.

Here’s some more advice from Mr. Godin on when to quit:

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Several weeks ago, I announced that Life Evolver was added to Alltop, a popular news/blog aggregator. If you haven’t visited Alltop yet, I’d encourage you to do so… Here are three reasons why:

Three Reasons Why Alltop Kicks Ass

1) They “help out underdogs and undiscovered gems”

Check out this graph- I’ve plotted the Alltop sites/blogs listed under the Lifehacks category, by their Alexa (popularity) ranking:

What does this scatter graph mean? The most popular Alltop Lifehacks category site has a Alexa ranking of 1,077; the least popular has an Alexa ranking of over 13 million… So basically, there is an even distribution between super-popular blogs like Lifehacker, and brand-new blogs like Life Evolver. This creates a level playing field for blogs like mine, which have only been around for a few weeks.

Compared to other methods of getting attention/building traffic, there just aren’t a lot of options for new bloggers. Google largely bases search results on the number of sites linking to your site, so this makes getting traffic from Google with a new blog very difficult. Getting to the front page of Digg requires that you have 1) A Digg-worthy post (usually a list of some sort, or a somewhat sensationalized story) and 2) A strong network of other Diggers to help you make the story popular. Again, this is very difficult for new bloggers.

2) The sites and blogs listed on Alltop are hand-picked, with feedback from the micro-blogging community

The Alltop about page explains, “The Twitter community has been the single biggest factor in the quality of Alltop. Without this group of mavens and connectors, Alltop would not be what it is today.”

Alltop is basing the sites they list on the wisdom of the community. This gives them a much higher-quality selection of sites than any automated algorithm could produce.

3) The diversity of the content under each category gives you a macro view that you can’t find elsewhere

This ties in with reason #1, but when you have super-popular websites, alongside brand-new unpopular websites, it creates a whole new perspective that you wouldn’t traditionally see. One reason for this is because the writers of those different types of sites usually come from very different backgrounds and write about very different topics.

Google couldn’t get away with putting brand-new unpopular websites at the top of their search results, because part of the algorithm for determining relevance is the number of sites linking to a site. But Alltop can put unpopular sites next to super-popular ones, because they are hand-picked by the community.

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When we imagine the future, we often do so in the blind spot of our mind’s eye.

-Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

As a kid, you were probably asked the common question adults ask all kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. You used your imagination and came up with an answer. It is highly likely that you did not become what you said you wanted to be as a child. But your imagination as a child predicted that you would be happy in that occupation. What do you think about your predictions now?

For me, as a child, first I wanted to be paleontologist, then Batman, and later, a magician. I did not become any of those, and I don’t know if I would be happy with as any of them (well, maybe as Batman!). So why was my imagination such a bad predictor of what occupation I would be happy with in the future?

The book Stumbling on Happiness describes three errors we make when trying to imagine our future happiness:

Three Errors We Make When Predicting Happiness

Error #1: Realism- We are often fooled by our own imaginations.

Example: When you recall a memory from the past, the brain actually re-writes that memory. The more you don’t remember, the more the brain will embellish when re-writing the memory.

Error #2: Presentism- Applying our current emotional state and ideals onto thoughts of our past or future.

Example: When you are depressed, you vaguely remember being happy in your past, and you don’t think anything in your future would make you happy.

Error #3: Rationalization- We often misjudge how we will feel about the future when we finally get there.

Example: When imagining about a future positive event, such as winning the lottery, you often overestimate your level of happiness.

If our imagination is so bad at predicting our future, how can we predict our future happiness?

Tips for Predicting Future Happiness

1) Never trust your gut

Instead of simply contemplating how your future would be, and making opinions based on that, question yourself.

Example: If you think you would be happier in a different field of work, question yourself. Are you simply having a bad day? Or have you felt like this for some time? Ask others if they think you would enjoy a different field of work.

2) Take action

You will learn a lot more by taking action than you would ever learn by contemplating.

Example: If you think you would be happy in a different career, go job shadow for a day. You will learn a lot more about the job in that day than you ever would have using your imagination.

3) Talk to someone who has already done what you want to do

Because we don’t realize how similar we all are, humans often refuse to use others as surrogates. Taking to someone who has already done what you want to do is an effective way to predict your future emotions. As shown by presentism, realism, and rationalization, relying solely on your imagination is flawed in many ways.

Example: If you think you would be happy in a different career, talk to someone who has already been in that career field. You will get a more realistic perspective than you would have using your imagination.

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