I came across a very interesting infographic yesterday from Michael Hyatt that summarized the importance of sleep.

“If you are a high-achiever, this might be the single most important tip I could give you for improving your productivity.” Michael Hyatt

I was shocked to discover that the world’s top athletes get significantly more sleep than the average of 6 hours 44 minutes, Lebron James gets as much as 12 hours of sleep!

I’ve been tracking my sleep for nearly a year with my Microsoft Band. While not an apples to apples comparison with the data mentioned above (it was collected with a Zeo), it is still very intriguing.

• Some days I feel great, some days I feel worn out
  • I’ve discovered a correlation between the amount of sleep I get according to the Band and how alert I feel the next day
  • I’ve discovered a correlation between how good I feel during exercise and the amount of restful sleep I get
• I’m in bed approximately 8 hours per night
  • I only sleep 4 hours 28 minutes per night (vs. 6 hours 44 minutes from the Zeo data)
  • I rarely get what the Microsoft Band calls “Restful Sleep” (18 minutes per night)
    • Restful sleep is stage 3 sleep and healthy should be about 25% of your total sleep time (according to the moderator Daniel Rubio). Mine is 7%
  • I “wake up” around 11 times per night
  • My sleep efficiency is 58%
    • Normal is 85% and good sleep efficiency is above 90%

After a year of collecting this data and running numerous experiments I’ve found almost nothing that improves my sleep time, my restful sleep, or my sleep efficiency. If sleep is so important to my overall quality of life I decided to see a sleep doctor. A number of years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, but I didn’t do anything about it.

Last night I went to the “Sleep Lab” for my sleep study. They wired me up with electrodes on my head, my chest, and my legs. They hooked me up to an oxygen meter and they had a UV video camera. They told me they were going to monitor me and if I showed signs of sleep apnea they’d wake me up and put a Cpap machine on me to see if it improved my sleep.

They didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night to put the Cpap machine on, so they must not have discovered sleep apnea.

When I woke up this morning my band showed I had a little less sleep than normal-3 hours 39 minutes with 19 minutes of “restful” sleep and 68% sleep efficiency waking up 9 times.

My sleep technician couldn’t give me the results but she indicated that I grind my teeth, my legs twitch, I wake up multiple times in the evening, and that I was dreaming early in the morning.

I’m excited for the results. If there really is something wrong with my sleep and it can be treated it can have a huge impact on the quality of my life!

Stay tuned for the results…

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