A well-rested athlete is a better athlete and less prone to injuries.
In these times of hustle, it is a relief to come across high achievers who don’t believe that you lose if you snooze. Ahead of the Olympics in Paris next month — the biggest sporting event on the planet and a make-or-break gig in an athlete’s career — the Indian contingent has been assured that should performance anxiety keep them awake in the watches of the night, there will be help available in the form of a “sleep advisor” and “sleeping kits”. A well-rested athlete is a better athlete and less prone to injuries.
Is it too much to hope that this official recognition of the importance of a good night’s sleep — true rest, in other words — will penetrate the smugness of those who extol the virtues of “obsession with work”, as the newly-elected MP, Kangana Ranaut, did recently? She’s not alone: Last year, Narayana Murthy exhorted India’s youth to work 70 hours a week. Other titans of industry and political leaders, like Elon Musk, Martha Stewart and Bill Clinton, too have spoken about working up to 18 hours a day and, as a natural corollary, sleeping for less than the recommended six. Sleep deprivation as a recipe for success, in other words.
For most people, however, it is merely a recipe for disaster. While there are enough studies to back the importance of sleep for such functions as memory formation, processing of ideas and decision-making, for anyone who has hit the snooze button once too often and ended up a groggy mess chugging Red Bulls and coffee at the workstation, experience is instructive enough. Perhaps the day will come when the strivers will stop sleep-shaming the rest. One can certainly dream about it — but for that, one must first sleep.
