We all have those friends or colleagues who brag about how little sleep they get. They can get into your head—making you feel like somehow if you’re not totally destroying your body in the pursuit of your goals, you must not really want to succeed. But that’s simply not true. Not only is your body designed to get around seven or eight hours of sleep a night, spend regular time in nature, and be surrounded by loved ones to survive but so is your brain. So to those individuals who think that just your muscles are taking a hit when you don’t sleep, you’re wrong: your mind is suffering, and so too is your work because of it. We’re not robots; we don’t function on information input alone. We need certain things (like rest) to make the most of the information we take in. Here is why doing less is important for success.
The creative brain flows during rest
Have you ever noticed that you come back from a long walk, or a night watching a live show, or listening to a poetry reading, with a head full of ideas? That’s because your creative brain flows during rest. You need to give yourself the chance to take in information in order to come up with ideas. But you can’t do that if you’re always doing, doing, doing.