Quality Over Quantity

Let me tell you why "get 8 hours of sleep each night" isn’t great advice.

Get 8 hours is outdated advice, because we know (thanks science) it's more important to get several deep, restorative, hours of sleep and REM cycles than 8 raw hours. Two people can each get 8 hours and get wildly different results. One feels great, another may wake up more tired than they felt falling asleep.

I, selfishly, feel this is especially true for women. And even more on point for women my age. I am a zombie when I go 2 nights without restorative sleep. And I get a solid, restful night's sleep about 3 times a month. It's no joke.

Here's how this applies at work. Sending the memo or holding the all hands meeting isn't "communication hours logged." It's the equivalent of lying in bed without ever hitting deep sleep. Filling a page with a project plan and timeline isn't effective communication. It's important, and you need to do those things, but time spent doing those tasks doesn't equal impact or understanding.

• Deep sleep consolidates memory and repairs tissue - a real Q&A session consolidates understanding and allows employees to be heard and get what THEY need. A long email gets scrolled past or scanned by most - not the same effect.

• Not getting enough sleep (scientifically called sleep debt) compounds quietly until it wrecks you; unanswered questions compound into rumors until they derail your rollout.

• Different sleep stages do different jobs (REM = emotional processing, deep = physical repair); comms needs different formats too — FAQs for facts, forums for feelings, 1:1s for real concerns.

You need to lean into your experts and let the people who understand how to lead change build the comms plan and then FOLLOW their lead. Get out of the way and let them do what's right for your team and the project.

We can't chalk the hours and call it done. You've got to do the right thing for YOUR project. If you need help - I'm here - book a call!