Dan Martell - June 01, 2020


How to Maximize Sleep as an Entrepreneur


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

203.85628

Word Count

2,763

Sentence Count

160


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.080 Hey everybody, Dan Martell here,
00:00:01.160 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.560 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:05.800 how to get to sleep fast.
00:00:08.160 Make sure you have a deep sleep,
00:00:09.480 especially if you're an entrepreneur
00:00:11.440 and be sure to stay the end where I'm gonna share with you
00:00:13.680 access and links to all of the resources
00:00:15.800 I mentioned in this video.
00:00:17.080 You're not gonna wanna miss that.
00:00:30.000 All right, so my sleep journey,
00:00:33.760 just so that you guys have context,
00:00:35.580 I get 93, 94 sleep quality scores every night.
00:00:39.620 One of my good friends, Chad, calls it sleep porn.
00:00:42.760 I use my Oura Ring.
00:00:43.880 This is actually an Oura Ring.
00:00:44.940 I use it, a wedding band.
00:00:46.380 It's, if you don't know what it is, it's, anyways,
00:00:49.100 it's an electronic device that measures a lot of cool stuff,
00:00:52.240 but definitely my sleep.
00:00:54.180 Here's the thing is I didn't really prioritize sleep
00:00:57.020 growing up, growing up as an entrepreneur,
00:01:00.560 I built a company called Sphere,
00:01:01.720 didn't care about my sleep,
00:01:03.480 did another company, Flowtown, same deal.
00:01:06.600 I pretty much, it wasn't until I had kids
00:01:08.020 where all of a sudden now I had these human alarm clocks
00:01:11.480 that were waking up every morning
00:01:12.780 and I really need to dial in my routine and structure.
00:01:18.060 And what happened is when I got my Oura Ring
00:01:19.900 about three years ago, it gave me something to measure.
00:01:23.720 And there's a great saying
00:01:25.960 by Peter Drucker that what gets measured gets managed.
00:01:29.300 And all of a sudden now I made it a game
00:01:31.400 that I wanted to get world-class at sleep.
00:01:33.380 And that's where I went through this process
00:01:35.720 of studying, talking to really incredible people.
00:01:38.960 One of my friends, Ben Greenfield,
00:01:40.420 shared with me some strategies
00:01:41.380 I'm gonna teach you in this episode.
00:01:43.380 And then also my buddy, Matt Delant,
00:01:45.600 who is literally the sleep czar.
00:01:48.260 He's probably spent 50 grand on different experiments
00:01:52.660 and strategies to get the best sleep possible.
00:01:55.500 I'm not gonna share some of those
00:01:56.620 because they're obviously out of range for a lot of people.
00:01:59.260 I personally don't think I'm gonna go from a 94 to 96
00:02:02.200 if I get some of these devices.
00:02:04.160 That being said, I'm gonna share with you my strategy,
00:02:06.840 make sure I get to bed and fall asleep quick,
00:02:09.660 stay in a deep sleep and wake up feeling fresh
00:02:13.160 so I can get on with my day
00:02:14.460 because just because I sleep well
00:02:16.300 does not mean that I'm not hard charging
00:02:18.560 any less than I was before.
00:02:20.080 I just do it with a clearer mind.
00:02:22.000 Let's get into it.
00:02:22.940 Number one, daily dumps.
00:02:24.860 Yes, that's what I'm calling it.
00:02:26.820 I know it sounds hilarious,
00:02:28.460 but here's the way I think of it
00:02:30.480 is every day at the end of my day,
00:02:34.380 I really need to get out of my mind on paper,
00:02:37.780 but in my case, a doc, a Google doc,
00:02:40.420 all of the things that are still outstanding
00:02:42.420 that I need to work on.
00:02:43.620 The reason why is because if I don't do that,
00:02:45.840 when I'm laying in bed trying to get to sleep,
00:02:47.540 my brain keeps going, hey, you forgot about this.
00:02:49.940 Hey, you forgot about this.
00:02:50.980 What about that?
00:02:51.600 Did that person ever get back to you?
00:02:52.800 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:02:53.520 and you literally will toss and turn all night.
00:02:56.040 So what I do at the end of my day,
00:02:57.580 it's five o'clock because I go get my kids,
00:02:59.560 is I dump everything into a Google Doc, including my email.
00:03:03.460 So I get to inbox zero every day
00:03:05.120 because I transfer my emails into this Google Doc
00:03:08.580 and I put every other project that I need
00:03:10.540 to review or focus on in there.
00:03:12.800 So that way when I close my laptop,
00:03:15.200 I know that it's there, it's ready for me to review
00:03:17.800 to make sure I prioritize in the morning.
00:03:20.100 So a daily dump at the end of your workday
00:03:22.560 to get things out of your mind onto digital paper
00:03:26.380 so that you don't toss and turn and worry
00:03:28.800 and so that you can be present with people
00:03:30.700 you might be spending your nights with,
00:03:32.500 your family, your partner,
00:03:34.300 and if you have kids, it's critical.
00:03:36.480 So do that, start with the Daily Dump.
00:03:38.320 Number two, early to bed.
00:03:40.120 This is gonna be a tough one.
00:03:41.300 I know a lot of you do not wanna hear this.
00:03:42.980 You want to continue staying up till 11,
00:03:46.200 two o'clock in the morning,
00:03:47.220 working, partying with friends till one in the morning,
00:03:49.800 Whatever your spice of life is, I will say this,
00:03:53.900 that the thing that's allowed me to really dial in my sleep
00:03:57.120 is following, because this is the first thing
00:03:59.020 my Oura Ring told me, is like,
00:04:00.340 your optimal time to go to sleep is between 7.45 and 8.15.
00:04:03.740 Let's be honest, I've got kids,
00:04:05.200 they don't go to bed till 7.20
00:04:06.420 and I do wanna hang out with my wife.
00:04:07.960 So for me, it's 9 p.m.
00:04:10.180 9 p.m., I am typically sleeping
00:04:12.700 and I do a full eight hours right till five in the morning.
00:04:16.540 So I'm at 5 a.m.
00:04:17.260 Or if you wanna do six, you can go 10 to six.
00:04:18.760 whatever the time is you need to go to bed
00:04:21.460 probably earlier than what you're doing.
00:04:23.000 The reason why is you have a circadian rhythm.
00:04:25.200 You have this nocturnal default sensory of your body,
00:04:30.580 your biological clock that wants to be,
00:04:32.620 once the sun goes down, it wants to go to bed.
00:04:35.480 And the longer you fight that,
00:04:36.760 the less chance you're going to allow your body
00:04:40.320 to do what it does naturally while you're sleeping,
00:04:42.760 to rejuvenate, to repair, to recover.
00:04:45.640 And for me, that is critical.
00:04:47.200 So yes, it means that it takes a whole lot.
00:04:49.700 Do I stay up till two in the morning partying?
00:04:51.940 Like I said to somebody the other day,
00:04:53.980 the ROI required for that to be true is very rare.
00:04:58.900 Maybe once or twice in an annual basis,
00:05:01.300 somebody will present an opportunity to me
00:05:03.900 that requires that kind of commitment,
00:05:07.000 like New Year's Eve and British Virgin Islands
00:05:09.760 that I just got to enjoy.
00:05:11.580 But it is rare that I'm going to bed late.
00:05:14.380 So early to bed is a key strategy.
00:05:16.380 Number three, cold room.
00:05:18.420 Turns out I am, I generate a lot of heat.
00:05:22.640 My wife have always said, I am like an energy plant
00:05:25.800 when, you know, if I just, I don't know why,
00:05:28.760 it's just my body type, but here's the deal.
00:05:31.180 I think for most people, if you think about it,
00:05:33.340 when you went camping as a kid,
00:05:34.760 maybe you've experienced this,
00:05:36.320 or if you do like I do
00:05:37.400 and set the temperature cold in your room,
00:05:39.560 there's something about having cold air in your breath,
00:05:42.440 but your body being warm that feels really relaxing
00:05:45.440 and really nurturing.
00:05:47.780 So when I travel, or definitely when I'm home,
00:05:50.400 I set the temperature low,
00:05:51.300 but when I travel, I do the same thing.
00:05:52.660 So much so that recently I had my team,
00:05:55.060 we had a team meeting in my hotel room
00:05:56.680 and when they came in, they were freezing
00:05:59.740 because I probably had, I think Fahrenheit,
00:06:02.300 it was at 68 Fahrenheit.
00:06:04.140 I like to keep it down in like the 17 to 18 Celsius range.
00:06:09.600 If it's wintertime, I'll open a window,
00:06:11.280 but I really want to feel cold outside of my bed
00:06:15.320 so that when I'm sleeping, my body's like,
00:06:17.740 okay, it is time to get a deep night sleep, okay?
00:06:21.860 So make sure that you try this out.
00:06:23.420 Set your room cold and see if that works for you.
00:06:25.420 Number four, ramp down.
00:06:27.460 So I think that, you know,
00:06:29.080 I learned this as a software programmer.
00:06:31.940 When you start your work, you should ramp up.
00:06:34.320 You should have a process for getting into it.
00:06:35.980 And when you're done, you should have a process
00:06:37.220 for, you know, kind of ramping down.
00:06:39.200 That's why I do the daily dumps of everything in my head.
00:06:41.980 That's an example.
00:06:42.560 But I have the same process for my nighttime routine.
00:06:44.800 So nighttime routine, you know,
00:06:47.920 pretty much starts like after dinner.
00:06:50.220 I make sure I stay away from devices
00:06:52.000 and all that fun stuff, no stimulations, et cetera.
00:06:54.700 But the big thing is I read books
00:06:57.640 and there's something about reading a book
00:07:00.520 that kind of cues my mind.
00:07:02.400 I don't read like super creative business books.
00:07:06.120 I usually read kind of just not boring,
00:07:08.640 but I would say things that I find harder to read,
00:07:11.060 hence I'm trying to fall asleep.
00:07:12.440 So a little bit more boring, a little bit more story-based
00:07:16.780 so there's no like having my brain get wired for new ideas
00:07:20.280 and wanting to jump out of bed to go work on them.
00:07:23.420 And it's gotten to the point now that even when I go on vacation
00:07:26.760 and I'm reading my Kindle, it's very,
00:07:30.320 you can frequently find me falling asleep poolside
00:07:33.360 because I've created this habit of when I'm reading my Kindle, I get sleepy.
00:07:38.680 And because of that,
00:07:39.640 because I've continued to use that
00:07:41.460 as my mechanism for winding down at the end of the day
00:07:44.500 and really going to sleep, I have no issue.
00:07:46.760 I can't remember the last time
00:07:47.680 where I didn't get to sleep on time
00:07:49.740 or where I didn't feel like,
00:07:50.960 most of the time I'm rereading the same page on that book
00:07:54.920 for a whole week
00:07:56.640 until finally I might make two or three page progress.
00:07:59.520 Most of my real deep reading I do throughout daylight times,
00:08:02.780 but end of the day I ramp down
00:08:05.000 and for me going to sleep,
00:08:06.140 I have this trigger where I start reading on my Kindle
00:08:08.860 and usually within two or three minutes, I am out.
00:08:11.680 Number five, blackout.
00:08:13.340 So blackout's fun because it's not being blackout drunk.
00:08:16.220 It's blackout in the sense that you want
00:08:18.540 to visually blackout your room.
00:08:21.220 So the way I do that, because it's easiest,
00:08:22.800 I use a sleep mask, okay?
00:08:24.020 So it's called the Sleep Master Sleep Mask.
00:08:25.560 Again, I'll show you how to get all the links
00:08:27.400 to these products at the end.
00:08:28.940 But the idea is that you wanna make sure
00:08:31.840 you don't have any interruptions because of light.
00:08:34.440 And too often people think that the room are dark,
00:08:36.960 but it is not.
00:08:37.960 Like I'm talking like dark,
00:08:39.180 like you can't see the person sleeping next to you.
00:08:41.600 Like you want no ambient light.
00:08:43.480 Sometimes it could be light from your phone
00:08:45.900 or some device in your room
00:08:47.260 with like a little green power on light, et cetera.
00:08:50.460 Creating this ambient light
00:08:51.420 and you take it for granted that it's present,
00:08:53.120 but it actually will affect your sleep.
00:08:54.620 So full sleep mask.
00:08:56.140 The other blackout I do is on the audio level.
00:08:58.200 So I'm a big fan of white noise,
00:08:59.580 but I've gone to the next level.
00:09:00.700 Thanks to my buddy, Ben Greenfield.
00:09:02.680 Check out all of the biohacking stuff that Ben does.
00:09:05.560 He's literally, he's been on Joe Rogan.
00:09:07.300 He's ridiculous.
00:09:09.020 He's even done stem cells in his man parts.
00:09:12.160 Just to throw that out there,
00:09:13.360 if you're really like,
00:09:14.060 who's the best biohacker in the world?
00:09:15.660 Dave Asprey, yes, you are the godfather of biohacking,
00:09:19.260 but I'm pretty sure Ben has taken it to another level.
00:09:21.920 So on the audio level,
00:09:23.800 he recommended me an app called Sleepstream 2.
00:09:27.140 It's got this thing called binaural beats
00:09:28.900 into the white noise,
00:09:30.560 and you can set different settings,
00:09:32.200 and it's cool because it has eight hours of audio
00:09:34.840 so you can go offline,
00:09:36.500 you don't have to be connected to the internet
00:09:37.480 to stream the audio
00:09:38.560 and also if you're flying,
00:09:40.780 like when I do international flights
00:09:42.320 and I'm doing some red eyes,
00:09:43.520 I'll use that to make sure
00:09:45.600 that I get a really good deep sleep
00:09:46.800 so nothing around me wakes me up
00:09:48.580 and he even recommends,
00:09:49.680 I don't have this but I just bought it
00:09:51.100 which is a sleep mask
00:09:52.940 that's got the audio headphones built in
00:09:55.680 using Bluetooth so that they're flat
00:09:57.700 and that way you can lay on your side.
00:10:00.400 I've been using my AirPods when traveling on flights
00:10:02.800 and whatnot, don't really work.
00:10:04.040 You want noise cancelling or the downside
00:10:06.260 is they don't have noise cancelling,
00:10:07.960 but it's better than nothing.
00:10:09.180 You definitely wanna make sure that there's no chance
00:10:11.380 that you're accidentally waking up
00:10:12.660 because of sounds that might be going on
00:10:14.460 outside your room or in your house
00:10:15.680 that you're not aware of when you're sleeping
00:10:17.080 that's waking you up and then causing you an interruption
00:10:19.860 to your sleep pattern.
00:10:22.000 So black out your room, your senses,
00:10:25.180 easy tools to get that done.
00:10:27.480 Number six, no consumption.
00:10:29.620 All right, so I know this isn't gonna be a popular one, okay?
00:10:32.660 But here's the deal.
00:10:33.400 If you wanna get great sleep,
00:10:35.080 you think that drinking alcohol is helping.
00:10:38.040 It is not, it's scientifically proven.
00:10:40.540 You can literally run your own split test
00:10:42.180 between a week of having a glass of wine at dinner
00:10:44.800 to kind of wind down versus a week of not
00:10:46.820 and look at your sleep patterns.
00:10:48.340 So the data's out, no consumption is just one-on-one stuff.
00:10:52.380 So it's table stakes for getting a good night's sleep.
00:10:54.560 So that's not even part of my conversation.
00:10:56.580 The other one is consumption around food.
00:10:58.240 I think too often, especially if you're snacking late to right before you go to bed, the digestion system will turn and kind of like the sugar levels will spike and it'll just really mess.
00:11:09.760 Like if you've ever had a big meal and then tried to go to sleep, you might fall asleep fast because you just had like this huge kind of carb load crash.
00:11:17.020 But the quality of the sleep is not there.
00:11:20.520 So make sure when I say no consumption, it means no consumption on alcohol or food.
00:11:25.400 For me, 6.30 onward, I like to fast till the next morning at 8 a.m.
00:11:29.880 So I get a kind of not a really long fast, but a decent fast between 6.30 and 8 a.m.
00:11:34.620 But that to me is how we're really going to just allow our bodies to do what it needs to do to recover
00:11:40.300 and really repair while we sleep because that is the benefit for me when it comes to this charging forward,
00:11:47.020 building a business, being present for my family, really trying to squeeze as much out of life.
00:11:52.300 Sleep's a non-negotiable
00:11:53.540 because without that,
00:11:54.680 everything else starts to fall apart.
00:11:56.360 So quick recap,
00:11:57.520 six strategies to fall asleep faster
00:11:59.520 and get deeper sleep as an entrepreneur.
00:12:01.480 Number one, daily dumps,
00:12:03.200 get everything out of your mind onto a digital paper.
00:12:05.640 Two, early to bed,
00:12:07.260 follow the patterns of the sun as a little cue, a tip.
00:12:11.460 Cold room, make sure it's cold,
00:12:13.080 set it when you're traveling,
00:12:14.200 ramp down, have a habit.
00:12:16.500 For me, it's reading to go to bed fast.
00:12:18.420 Black out your room, audio and visual.
00:12:21.360 And six, no consumption to make sure
00:12:23.620 that your body is ready to get a awesome night's sleep.
00:12:28.060 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
00:12:29.580 I wanna share with you an exclusive resource.
00:12:32.060 Well, resources.
00:12:33.040 I have the how to get back to sleep
00:12:35.540 if you've woken up video.
00:12:38.260 So if you search my YouTube channel, you'll find that.
00:12:41.020 I've got some very structured practices
00:12:42.760 because I coach high-performing entrepreneurs
00:12:44.360 that really struggle with this.
00:12:46.100 So if your mind's racing, you can't get back to sleep,
00:12:48.800 I've got quick four-step strategy
00:12:50.380 to get you back to sleep.
00:12:51.520 So that's a video on my YouTube you can check out.
00:12:53.780 Also, all the resources and links to the sleep mask,
00:12:57.340 the sleep phones, the sleep stream audio app, et cetera,
00:13:01.080 are linked below this episode.
00:13:03.400 So you can click on those, check them out.
00:13:04.620 They're not referral links or anything.
00:13:05.860 I'm not, they're not affiliate links.
00:13:06.980 I just wanna make sure you have access
00:13:08.300 to the same tools that I use.
00:13:10.640 And, you know, if you like this video,
00:13:12.860 I'd ask you to smash that like button,
00:13:14.880 subscribe to my channel.
00:13:16.180 And if there's anybody you feel that this video could serve,
00:13:18.320 feel free to share it with them directly.
00:13:21.100 As per usual, I want to challenge you
00:13:22.760 to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
00:13:24.660 And I'll see you next Monday.
00:13:29.260 Oh, that's sneaky.