Hey! 1
Thumbs up for completing another module. 2
Now today I wanted to talk to you about the importance of sleep. 3
I know I'm laughing as I say it because sounds like such a silly thing right? 4
Who doesn't know how to sleep? But actually there's a lot of things I've tried over the past like few 5
years that have really helped me. 6
Firstly when I was working in Medicine, when I was training in surgery, the sort of consensus that people 7
told me is like, 8
"Look if you're gonna be hardcore, if you are going to be really good at your job, you have to be good 9
at being sleep deprived." 10
Like just you know like people would like show off how like oh, "I only slept for like two hours yesterday." 11
And actually you know at the time, I was really impressed. 12
I was like, "Wow! They're like so hard core. They work really hard and they don't sleep and they have more 13
hours." But as time has gone on and as I've found more objective measures of my sort of brain performance, 14
I've realized that this is such a silly way to think about things like sleep is so important. It helps 15
your brain get rid of a lot of the sort of things that build up during the day 16
right? 17
A lot of the byproducts and it's essentially helps you regenerate. 18
So the nights when I sleep really you know like two hours or three hours, I really feel it the next day. 19
I can do things that I've already learned how to do like things by rote, but I can't do anything creative. 20
I really struggle to learn things. 21
I struggle to make connections in my brain. 22
And it made me realize like, "What am I doing? Why am I living life like a zombie trying to attain this 23
like level of... 24
It's like sort of approval of people when I know that I'm a much better person?" 25
I'm also a friendly person when I sleep more. 26
So one of the things I've been trying to do is to have an alarm that goes off like about an hour before 27
I have to go to sleep. 28
So instead of having like a wake up alarm, having an alarm that tells me, "OK it's time to wind down. It's 29
time to switch off the screens." I've even got this... 30
I've even got this like red tinted glasses that I wear at home when I'm like looking at something like 31
if I have to watch something with other people. 32
And just like wind down with like a non... like a... 33
And just wind down with like a fiction book of some sort, 34
so that once I'm actually in bed I'm like fully calm and I'm not so like agitated that it takes me ages 35
to fall asleep. 36
Other things that really help is drinking some warm milk, 37
having a little snack before I go to sleep. 38
But the importance of sleep is like, it's just a con. 39
There's nothing that beats it really. 40
There's no supplement that I've ever taken or any sort of medication or anything else basically that 41
lives up to what sleep can do for you. 42
So don't try to be hardcore, 43
try to get enough sleep and try to keep a regular rhythm so that the next day you're actually fresh. 44
And the thing that your brain learns, it actually keeps rather than just you know... you might have to 45
cram stuff but you probably won't be able to hold onto that knowledge or skill unless you have really 46
good sleep. 47
So try that out and keep going keep going keep going keep going and you're going to do great.