What Keeps You Up At Night?

If you are like most business owners or executives, sleep can sometime seem like a luxury - more than a necessity. While the pressure to perform has been known to cause many sleepless nights, I think for true top performers its more adrenaline that keep them up.  For that small group of people – perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population – sleep is a waste of time. 

Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and can make it through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine. These individuals also tend to have “Type A” personalities and have proven to be very successful in whatever they put their mind to. They are energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied their traits. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families. As someone who has a father who can not sleep for more than 1 or 2 hours, I can attest it’s very likely genetic – and research has similarly suggested a genetic inheritable component.  It’s not uncommon for my father to be sending faxes at 2 am in the morning.  His business associates much appreciate the invention of email, so they do not have to hear the phone ringing during the wee hours of the morning.

Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep each night,  about five people really do, Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group reports. The rest of the individuals end up chronically sleep deprived, and are part of the one-third of adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report issued last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. Oh wait….that is almost my career path to a “T”. The first company I started was a graphic design firm, where I would have client meetings all day and the graphic design work through the night.  The ability to sleep less provided me the opportunity to keep my overhead down (needed less outsourced labor) and grow the company very rapidly.  These days, the extra time allows me to not only be the thought leader (producing 6-7 pieces of content a week), but also allows me to manage a rapidly growing company, be an account manager for most of our key accounts and manage a busy family with three young children under the age of 4.

Now, am I implying that in order to be a great entrepreneur or business executive you need to be one of these rare 1% to 3%? No.  But if your look at some of the great leaders out there, they would likely fit these proportions and descriptions.  They have that internal drive that seems to have them going at all hours of the day.  Even if they try to sleep they can’t. They are always thinking about solutions to their problems, or that next great idea that will take their company to the next level. So my question to you is what keeps you up at night?  Stress or an internal drive for greatness?