A Good Night’s Sleep Is Key to Success. Here’s How Much Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet Get Each Night
In contemporary business language, you’ll rarely hear phrases like “I’ll get back to you right after my nap” or “I’m sleeping in today.”
We expect to hear energetic buzzwords like “action that,” “pivot,” and “disrupt” coming from the mouths of great entrepreneurs. The closest thing to a restful catchphrase you might hear is a philosophical “let me sleep on it.” But it’s never “let me sleep and sleep and sleep on it.”
Yet a full, quality night’s sleep is just what experts recommend for success. Lack of sleep impairs the entrepreneur’s most vital faculty: decision-making. It can also ‘disrupt’ your memory and focus, and not in a good way.
The people at Online Mattress Review commissioned research into the sleeping patterns of our most successful contemporaries – not just entrepreneurs, but politicians, writers, athletes, and performers.
How does your sleep compare to the rich and famous?
While you might expect their research to be biased in favor of ‘more sleep’ (and more mattresses), the data visualizations show a mixed bag of sleep routines among the rich and famous.
However, a subtler pattern emerges the closer you look at the data. Sure, there are outliers – the folk whose head barely touches pillow before they spring up to make another million. But the most balanced personalities, the most admirable success stories, pay close attention to how and when they sleep; it may improve your prospects of a better sleep routine.
The study found:
Mark Zuckerberg works long hours, working late into the night on Facebook (so as to leave time in the day to spend with family and friends.) While he gets to bed by 3 am, he sleeps in until 8 am for five hours of shut-eye.
Elon Musk is a workaholic who’s admitted working 120 hour weeks. He now manages to read a little before grabbing just six hours of sleep a night, going to bed at 1 am and rising at 7 am.
Jeff Bezos sleeps 7-8 hours per night. “I prioritize it. I think better. I have more energy. My mood is better,” as Bezos once said. Bezos specifically ties good sleep to his capacity to make smart decisions.
Donald Trump, ‘the third most powerful person in the world’ is one of the shortest sleepers – working right up to bedtime and then sleeping for just three hours.
On the long-sleeper end of the scale, you might be surprised to find that mega high-achieving athletes like NFL quarterback Tom Brady, and NBA point guard Stephen Curry both get an astounding 9 hours of sleep per night.
Bill Gates reads for one hour before bed to improve his sleep, usually turning in around midnight for around seven hours.
Warren Buffet is a notoriously big reader and, next to reading, what he does the most is sleep – preferably 8 hours per day or more.
