While some high-achieving entrepreneurs brag about their need for a small amount of sleep, research shows that all of our sleep needs are pretty consistent. If you don’t get at least seven hours of sleep nightly, you are working the next day at a huge disadvantage, and your health and your business will pay the price. Cornell University’s sleep researcher James Maas estimates that a business owner can lose at least 700 hours of sleep per year, or about what new parents lose the first year of a baby’s life.

 

Those high achievers would argue that they have the energy they need, and that they load up on caffeine to keep them going. Not a good idea. New scientific research shows that lack of sleep for more than a day or two can wreck havoc on your health, memory, concentration, mood and ability to make decisions – even if you think you are feeling fine.

 

According to a 2007 survey by Staples, 51 percent of business owners say that they regularly dream about work, with 70 percent of those saying they put to use those ideas they dream about.

 

The evidence that sleep really does matter is irrefutable and constantly growing, including the newly discovered link between sleep deprivation and serious illnesses such as diabetes and cancer. The World Health Organization (WHO) has gathered data that shows that sleep deprivation depresses the immune system to the point of calling it a carcinogen, comparable to tobacco.

 

If you’ve ever been in a meeting and forced yourself to stay awake, or reread a paragraph in a report many times to grasp the meaning, you already know that the sleep researchers are right about the effects of too little sleep on productivity.