Being an entrepreneur and running a business means never having the luxury of leaving your work at the office. While there are many benefits and upsides to business ownership, there are a number of added stressors that become part of your daily life.
This level of stress combined with the sheer number of hours being poured into a business can cause any person to become chronically exhausted. Even Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington can attest to that fact.
When everyone and everything depends on your leadership, one of the first things to go out of the window is sleep.
So, how important is sleep really when it comes down to business success?
Former pro football player and current Montreal entrepreneur Glenn B. Miller sat with Polysleep to give us his take on the importance of quality sleep for a sharp mind and a can-do attitude.
Miller is a firm believer that if you want to get up early in the morning and be the first out there conquering, you must recover well.
Being sharp and staying competitive means rest and rest means leaving your work behind, at the end of the workday.
He believes that an uninterrupted solid eight hours of quiet sleep is essential to regenerate for the following day – mentally and physically.
As a former football player, Miller suffered a few injuries during his pro days and as a result, underwent two hip replacements and a shoulder rebuild. Putting his physical health in the comfort of the right mattress is at the top of his list when it comes to sleep.
It is no secret that in 2020, we, as a society, are more plugged in and connected than ever before. For the vast majority of us, our smartphones have become like an extra limb, a literal extension of ourselves.
We spend hours upon hours scrolling social media and anything else we can find. Global statistics confirmed that in 2018, users spent 136 minutes per day on social media alone.
We spend most of our days staring at computer screens and then our downtime usually consists of turning a streaming service on to unwind (aka use as background noise while we mindlessly scroll Instagram).
As an entrepreneur, Miller believes that recovering from the day means cutting off from digital devices and learning to maintain a balance between life online and offline. Many of us have not yet implemented these types of changes and for lack of better words, we sleep like crap because of it.
Being constantly plugged in can lead to fatigue, tiredness, and a general lack of focus. Excessive screen time also means never getting a proper night’s rest and waking up the next morning feeling sluggish and sleepy.
Texts, social media, movies, vlogs, games, videos, e-readers, and electronics, in general, have more or less taken over our lives. We tend to feel out of place without them but it can’t be hard to relax after a long day when our brains are constantly being powered up by these devices.
Marrying Sports and Business
Glenn B. Miller tries to make the most out of his life as an entrepreneur and enjoys doing so thoroughly. His time in professional football and sports background gave him a lot of discipline to take on entrepreneurial ventures. Today, he owns his own merchant bank and his own art gallery alongside his wife, Lisabel.
He is a lecturer at McGill University for their MBA program, invests in different companies, and mentors’ ex-athletes and industry professionals.
All in a day's work, as they say. Miller divulges that it could be overwhelming to go from working all day to then getting home and having other responsibilities. We live in a world of abundant information and we’ve forgotten how to turn it off. If you’re an entrepreneur and have a job that you want to perform well on a daily basis, it’s vital to create a balance.
Unplugging means sleeping well and sleeping well comes with a ton of benefits. Maintaining a healthy immune system, memory, and metabolism all start with quality sleep. We seem to think that we can simply “push through the tired” but really, the less sleep you get, the more deprived you are and the less effective you become as a leader. A better night’s sleep can help entrepreneurs stay calm and focused at work because they make sleep work for them.
Schedule downtime. Unplug. Crawl into bed.
Your creative business ideas, quick-thinking, and future success will thank you.
