I am a both a TED talk tragic and a self-confessed obsessive, over-thinker about sleep. (An interest-driven hazard I guess – the sleep over-thinking).
I have posted a TED talk before by Arianna Huffington, titled How to Succeed: Get More Sleep. Arianna made many excellent points about why sleeping will help you be more successful in your work and life. At the time I was tres excited to come across the talk because it sits so nicely with all my enthusiastic ideas on the need for sleep.
But now…. there is a TED talk about sleep that had me loudly and excitedly “uhu”-ing, and “oh-yeah”-ing, nodding quite a lot and scribbling notes (2 pages worth).
As much as I loved Arianna’s talk, Russell Foster is the new TED sleep-talker I want to hug most.
My new hero…
He gave a TED talk in Edinburgh in June this year and his talk has just been uploaded.
HIs talk is titled Why do we sleep? – but it’s so much more than that. It’s not so much 21m47secs of WHY we sleep, it’s more an excellent, clearly explained, fascinatingly interesting outline of WHY WE NEED TO SLEEP. There’s a model brain involved and some edgy, terribly-contemporary cartoons to explain stuff for the visual learners.
Russell eloquently outlines all the reasons we need to sleep, but more importantly he spends time explaining what happens when we don’t get enough sleep – because that is where the BIG problems hide (and why I, and so many others, aren’t prepared to compromise on sleep – my God… I feel so validated).
Two pieces of advice from him that form the basis of why I want to hug him:
Take sleep seriously
Make your bedroom a haven for sleep
I must say, the only failure of his talk (I jest Russell…. kind of) is that he fails to include the sensible practice of sleeping separately if that’s what helps you attain the magic hours of sleep YOU need each night to function properly and indeed, make your bedroom a ‘haven for sleep’.
Enough of me however…..
May I present one of the MOST important videos you will ever watch (or want to show a disruptive partner)….