Sleep!

And so it has come to this. Sleep – that wonderful part of our daily life that we yearn for and look forward to, is now part of extensive research, more so than ever before. What started off in the 1930s as a research in a University that would later become Carnegie Mellon, has now been quantified as a potentially 79 billion USD business! Really?! We talk about out-of-the-box thinking so much and here, all we need to do is break down everything that we do every day and it is a topic of immense research and potential for business.

A recent article on this topic in the Fortune India magazine gave me food for thought. Companies such as Fitbit report millions of dollars in revenues quarter over quarter thanks to their wearable Tech products which basically charts how much sleep and seemingly more importantly, how much quality sleep you are able to get. How much it helps us is debatable, of course. It definitely helps Fitbit! They now have data from millions of hours of sleep across geographies, genders and timezones. The quality of the sleep that one can get has been connected to a myriad number of disorders ranging from Type 2 Diabetes to road accidents resulting in casualties.

I confess, some of the statistics are interesting, at least to me. Stuff like no other age group suffers from lack of sleep as much as the 40-something males or that 70% of humans ignore their natural “body clock” to adapt to the environment around them have got me thinking. Apparently some of us are more inclined to stay awake at night (nocturnal) and are forced to change our inclination to be diurnal. That must be about the university students who are invariably inclined to stay up late at night for one reason or another.

Seriously though, I do know of a fair number of people who struggle with sleep at night. All new-borns’ mothers have this affliction for sure. It is quite telling that children sleep much more than adults. The innocence of the mind and the ability to forget happenings, as a toddler and young kid must help with the sleep and the quality of the sleep. Personally, I have found that in order to get a poor night’s sleep – all one needs to do is to think of a particularly stressful event and all that we can or can’t do about it. Toss and turn around through the night, thinking about it. Just do not let go of the thought and there you have it – the night will turn into day and I would have had a sleepless night. The best sleep is when you are able to fall asleep as soon as you lay your head on the pillow – research has quantified the time down to 2 and a half minutes. Think about it the next time your head hits the pillow and I guarantee you would not be asleep even after 3 minutes!

Fundamentally, clearing the mind and letting go is important to living. Sleep is part of living and to get a good night’s sleep, let’s clear the clutter from the mind and let things be. Que c’era c’era!