#2 BookBites: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

This article is the second of a series of articles called BookBites. These articles will include summaries, quotes and/or meanings from the books I’ve read. They serve as catalysts for me to reflect on and deeper understand these books and to give bite-sized views into these books to other readers.

Matthew Walker is a neuroscientist and sleep researcher. In this book, he talks about the importance of sleep, myths around sleep, the phenomenon of dreams and how one can improve their sleep. He also touches on sleep disorders like narcolepsy and sleep apnea.

This book is a treasured read and my biggest takeaway from it is that organisations (companies and schools) need to be redesigned with a sleep-centred approach — because having employees or students who are not well-rested can make organisations lose billions of dollars. Well-rested employees guarantee better performance, more revenue and thereby a flourishing overall economy — all of which isn’t happening at the moment due to the fact that not many people, especially the decision-makers, know about this new science of sleep.

This mentality comes from the fact that many business leaders mistakenly believe that time spent on a task is equal to productivity and completion of that task.

A study across 4 large U.S. companies found that insufficient sleep cost almost $2000 per employee per year in lost productivity. That amount rose to over $3500 per employee in those suffering the most serious lack of sleep. The net capital loss of these companies is around $54 million annually.

Companies like Nike and Google have a malleable approach towards work schedules, where employees can work on their own schedule according to their individual circadian rhythms. The offices of these companies even have cosy nooks for people to take midday naps. Research proves that midday naps actually do improve the overall wellness, productivity and creativity of a human being — so this fact is quite important!

Thousands of genes within the brain depend upon consistent and sufficient sleep for their stable regulation. Deprive a mouse of sleep for just a day and the activity of these genes will drop by well over 200%. Like a stubborn file that refuses to be transcribed by a printer, when you do not lavish these DNA segments with enough sleep, they will not translate their instructional code into printed action and give the brain and body what they need.

Sleep helps us learn better. Knowledge retention of individual facts (i.e. learning) and connection of these individual facts as systemic knowledge (i.e. comprehension) happens during REM sleep. This chaining of different facts that happens when we sleep is what essentially separates us from computers. Standard computers can perfectly store 1000s of files but they do not intelligently interlink those files in multiple creative combinations.

An interesting discovery that this book gave me is that humans can be larks (who function best when they wake up early and sleep early) or owls (who function best when they wake up late and sleep late). Whether someone is an owl or lark is determined by their genes. So the next time someone criticizes you for not being able to wake up at 6 am, tell them this! (Of course, this isn’t an excuse for people who wake up at 2 pm every day)

Sleeping for 8 hours — no more, no less — is crucial for human beings and can help prevent diabetes, cardiovascular diseases… you name it! This is one of the most helpful medicines we can get that many of us miss out on.

After reading this book, I’m definitely not missing a dose of this drug every night!

Joe Rogan speaks to Matthew Walker about the science of sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

Matthew Walker’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM&list=PLFFcv1UK4b7OgB1I-LTVBP8xmDKwPL4-7&index=4&t=0s