Harvard Business Review on The Importance of a Good Night's Sleep

The importance of a good night’s sleep was the topic in the October 2, 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review:  “It is time to put the myth of the sleepless founder to bed.  Too many entrepreneurs think skipping on sleep is the heroic path to success, and a badge of honor.  But in a recent series of studies, we found several specific deficits among exhausted entrepreneurs that demonstrate that even the most dedicated founders could best serve their fledgling venture by resting up.”

“In the first study, we compared 784 practicing entrepreneurs to each other and asked them to report their sleep the previous night.  Each person then read three new venture executive summaries.  These summaries were independently rated for quality by a panel of expert entrepreneurs and investors, and our coauthor team categorized both superficial (obvious) and structural (non-obvious) alignment between the new technology and the intended market.  Two of the three ideas had both superficial and structural alignment, meaning that these ideas were more promising for commercial success.  One of the new venture ideas showed superficial alignment between the technology and the market, but had real structural problems, meaning this idea should be less promising compared to the other two.  Compared to well-rested entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who slept less the previous night frequently ranked the ill-conceived idea above one or both other two ideas.  This suggests that entrepreneurs who are short on sleep rely more on superficial cues when forming initial beliefs about new venture ideas.”

Author

R. Craig Miller DMD, MAGD, FICOI, Diplomate of The American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine Dr. Miller is a dentist in Livingston NJ. His practice is The Miller Center for Dental Excellence. His whole body, whole health approach to dental care has helped his patients not only have beautiful, functioning smiles, they also have better health. Patients are breathing and sleeping better from his fabrication of Oral Sleep Appliances. They are eating better from his information on nutrition. Dr. Miller is passionate about dentistry and helping as many people as he can.