MM#51--Our Great-Grandparents on Sleep

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. Did you know some 150 years ago we, human beings, on average, slept over 10 hours a night.
Yep, true story. Kind of crazy, right?

In fact, that is crazy, because right now the average American gets roughly 6.7 hours of sleep
a day and this little factoid comes to us from Sara Mednick and her gem of a book which is only 141 pages. Take an app, change your life, the scientific plan to make you healthier and more productive.

And as always, let's go to the book for a quote.

Before Thomas Edison's light bulb our great grandparents would get as much as 10 hours rest during an average week night. Today, we're lucky to get eight hours on the weekend.
The amount of actual week night's slumber has shrunk on average, to an alarming 6.7 hours.
We are a nation of the watching tired, so much so that 51% of the workforce reports that sleepiness on the job interferes with the volume of work they can do.

One in five adults is so sleepy that it interferes with his or her daily activities a few days a week, while an additional 20% report impairment a few days a month.

Once the nation with the most productive work workforce in the world, the United States, by a number of measures, has fallen behind countries such as France and Germany.
Our standard of living is slipping. Our students are underperforming, our collective health is deteriorating, and areas such as science and technology, we no longer dominate. Politicians, pundits and experts from all fields have made an industry out of explaining what's going wrong.

But continually overlooked is the role of that quiet little demon
fatigue. Unquote.

how powerful of a nugget of wisdom is that fatigue is
a huge problem in our country, in fact in the world.

So read To recap, let's think about that. Our great grandparents were locking down some 10 hours of sleep on average per day.

And you know, when there was no iPhones or no cars, it was only horse and carriage and in fact, the most important thing light bulbs, no light bulbs.
So no light bulbs was the key, just the candles in the Gaslamp gas lamps of the year.

Recently, with some friends I toured former President Andrew Jackson's house Hermitage, outside Nashville, Tennessee. And when I read this quote, about life before the light bulb took me back to the tour that we were on in that whole house. I imagine candles burning in certain areas of the house and the way life was back in the early to mid 1800s.

And in fact, if you are in the area, I would recommend making a stop there. You can learn a lot about our country and appreciate the United States and its unique history by visiting those patriotic sites like hermitage.

All the guides were fantastic. They were very knowledgeable, you could ask a lot of questions,
which I did.

But all of this leads me to just contemplate the way their life was versus the way our life is. I think that's fascinating.

We have it's so much easier today.
And it's actually more fascinating to contemplate to that they slept a lot longer than we do.
A lot longer.

Do you think today's current culture and it's kind of pseudo pride of how little we sleep is healthy?

You know that that pride that swells up in US

When we say, hey, we push through and got it out another five or six hours a night of sleep, because we were so disciplined, we were so driven, and we were so hungry to get back to work and finish that project. As we grit our teeth, and flex our muscles. Do you think any of that is healthy? Do you think any of that is needed?

I used to think that way.

I think about that now, and I'm like you're an idiot.

Or at least you thought like an idiot. So now take a moment and harken back to those days before Edison's light bulb was invented. In 1879, before the light bulb, human beings slept on average 10 over 10 hours asleep. They rose for the most part when the sun rose and went to bed and slept when the sun set.

And you fast forward today, and we have plummeted to just less than seven hours of sleep.
So today's to small nuggets of wisdom.

And this Mojo minute are, let's contemplate 1000s of years of our species sleeping over 10 hours. And that's probably a good thing.

And in the last 150 years, we're averaging less than seven hours of sleep,
which I would suggest is probably not the best thing for our species, at least not built biologically.

And finally, Sarah reminds us quote studies have conclusively linked sleep of sleeplessness to irritability, anger, depression, and mental exhaustion unquote.
So in today's Mojo minute, can we what can we do today? To prioritize our sleep just a little bit more?

Perhaps could we
put the iPhone into sleep mode a little earlier in the evening? Could we turn off the TV a little sooner? before bedtime? Whatever your tactic.

Let us appreciate our great grandparents sleep habits. And on that note, it's my wish that you have a good and well rested night.

And I'm hoping you get more than the average seven hours of sleep.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on