The Power of Sleep

It’s seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of bloggers lately writing about the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. Maybe I’m just noticing it because I’m not getting a whole lot of sleep thanks to my four and a half month old.

A lot of things you’ll read about starting a freelance business while you’re working a day job will suggest that one way to do it successfully is to get less sleep — either staying up late, getting up earlier or both.

While to some extent that’s a good idea — particularly if your daytime schedule is already jam-packed — it’s very possible to take the lack of sleep to an extreme.

You Still Have to Sleep

There’s a point at which cutting out sleep goes from a good idea to something that’s counterproductive. While you might be excited at first by the amount of work you can get done if you’re only sleeping five hours a night instead of your regular eight, over time you’ll start to drag and find that your performance — both at your day job and in your freelancing career — starts to suffer.

You’ll be cranky, unfocused and not producing your best work, none of which will endear you to your clients, your boss or your family members.

As in most things, the answer is balance. You’ll find out pretty quickly what the minimum amount of sleep is that you can function well on. For me, it’s probably about six hours. I can live with five hours, but usually if I get up after five hours of sleep one day I’ll sleep more the next day.

I’ve always been big on sleep, so you might find that you can do with less, or that you need more to be really productive, happy and doing your best work.

Other Ways to Find Time

If you’re not willing to give up sleep or just aren’t able to do it, there are usually some other ways to find time to get work done if you really need to. I’ll admit I didn’t have kids when I was freelancing along with a full-time job, but I never really went to bed later or got up earlier in order to work.

Instead, I worked in the evenings a couple of nights a week instead of hanging out with my husband. I worked during my lunch hour. Often I worked at other times at work when my regular work was slow (my direct boss knew about it, was sympathetic because he took freelance work, too, and I was discreet about it around others).

I’m not saying there are always ways to find the time without giving up some sleep, and in your case sleeping a half hour or an hour less (especially on the weekends) might be just the thing to give your career a boost.

The message is not to listen to the gurus so much that you make yourself sick or unhappy or that your work suffers for it.