Hyper successful people like Donald Trump and Martha Stewart like to remind as many people as often as possible of how little sleep they get. Donald and Martha subscribe to the Gladwell premise that the more you do something, the better you’ll be at it. When pressed, they’ll tell you that they owe their success to the number of hours thy put in to their work. And they’re right, sort of. But not really.

While science has revealed that roughly 5% of the global population are capable of functioning with high productivity on between four and five hours of sleep a night, the rest of us need between seven and nine hours of sleep to guarantee high attention to detail during the waking hours – that’s before we even get in to discussions of risks associated with sleep deprivation, including obesity and occasional doses of premature death.

The thing is, the success of the Donald cannot only due to the fact that he works more hours than most people. Donald’s empire is built on the back of the interns who do his dry cleaning runs. Donald is successful because he does the tasks that make him successful during the hours that he is most productive and accurate, whereas the average employee needs to divide their attention between work and life during business hours.

Additionally, hardcore execs like Donald and Martha are more than likely undercutting estimates of how many hours of rest they get. When you don’t drive the car, or fly the plane, you get to “snack” on sleep.

So, is less sleep better for your career? Almost certainly not.

Hiring an assistant on the other hand, well, that could make you rich.

[Source : BBC]

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