73: The Best Sleep Strategies for High Achievers
Behind Their Success: Ep 73
Catherine: [00:00:00] often when people hear my field, they say kind of, scoffing, Ugh. I will sleep when I'm dead. I love to have for a five hour night because I have so many more hours in the day. but I think, well, you're gonna be dead faster.
Paden: Hello everybody. Welcome to Behind Their Success Podcast. I'm Paden Squires, the host, and today we have on Catherine Darley, Dr. Catherine Darley. Her expertise is in natural sleep medicine. Over the last 20 years, she has helped patients one-on-one, taught corporate audiences, and trained other medical professionals. More recently, she has created a series of online courses customized for different lifestyles to learn how to sleep. Dr. Catherine Darley, welcome on Behind Their Success.
Catherine: Thank you. So glad to be here.
Paden: Yeah, Catherine. so sleep, obviously, you know, uh, that's a big, big topic. Tell us a little bit about what you do.
Catherine: Well, I love sleep because it's universal. Everybody has their own [00:01:00] experience, their own sleep story, and, I just love to help people with such a foundational piece. What I do is I work with individual patients, one-on-one on sleep disorders, but when I've been doing that, what I've realized is that there's just a lot of misconceptions about sleep and you know, it's one of those things that is universal, but yet we don't learn about systematically. You know, it's not something that's covered in high school health classes. It's not covered with our doctors. Usually doctors will not ask about sleep. Fortunately it seems like that's is changing, but over the last 20 years of being in this field, that's been the reality.
Paden: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you say there's some kind of common misconceptions, you know, obviously, as entrepreneurs, high performers, whatnot, sleep is, unbelievably important, right? And, and getting in rhythms and, and stuff there. What are, like, what are some of the common [00:02:00] misconceptions you kind of see around sleep? Just out there in the health industry.
Catherine: Well, you mentioned entrepreneurs. You know, when I've gone and participated in, business networking groups, often when people hear my field, they say kind of, scoffing, Ugh. I will sleep when I'm dead. I love to have for a five hour night because I have so many more hours in the day. And of course I don't say it's to people in the moment, but I think, well, you're gonna be dead faster. And that's actually what the, uh, the data shows is that short sleepers do have a shorter lifespan. The thing is really, do you want to go through your life at the top of your game? You know, cognitively snappy, energetic, even. You know, even keel energy rather than energy that peaks and then crashes. Do you want to have strong physical [00:03:00] performance in terms of a quick reaction, time, good balance, all of those things? If you do, then sleep is part of that formula and we know absolutely that when people are sleep deprived, which over a third of us are sleep deprived chronically, our performance is gonna suffer.
Paden: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Certainly, certainly. I, you know, I can tell when I don't get the proper amount of sleep and the next day is always a struggle, right? Or at least, you know, you're, you're, you're at least not running anywhere near a hundred percent right. You can feel that kind of brain fog and moving a little slow. what are some like, just practical tips around, improving some sleep or some, some practical tips maybe some of the listeners can take away that you see as common problems.
Catherine: That, that's a, um, all day question. Yeah, I'm sure you got a lot of answer I should say. That could take all day. So everybody get cozy 'cause we're gonna be here for another seven hours. So the top ones I think about [00:04:00] us taking care of our sleep in three ways. Quantity. Are we getting enough sleep quality? Is it undisturbed both by things in our environment or internal things like a sleep disorder. And then the third piece is timing. So you wanna think about your sleep in those three ways. Quantity, people, adults, need somewhere between seven to nine hours of sleep. And think about it like a bell curve. You know, I'm at the 50th percentile for women my age in terms of height and, you know, that's not something that I choose. It's not something that I can really do anything about. I'm as tall as I was given the genetic code for. And, uh, the same thing with sleep. If you are someone who needs nine hours, it's not because of a personal failing or you're not trying hard enough or anything like that. It's just your set point. So, lots of people, about a third of people are getting only six hours a [00:05:00] night. That's not enough. That's probably enough for about 4% of us, but the other 96% of us, we need seven to nine. Uh, so a great strategy is first for people to figure out how much sleep do I do best with one tip. If you are waking up with an alarm clock or someone's waking you, that's not enough sleep. You're truncating your sleep, so don't do that to yourself. you know, figure out how much sleep you do best with, One. If you are waking up with an alarm and you suspect that you are chronically sleep deprived and sometimes people don't really know how much sleep they do best with, you could do what I call the 10 by 10 test. That is spending 10 hours in bed a night for 10 days in a row. It allows you to catch up on any chronic sleep debt and kind of figure out, okay, going forward, how much sleep do I need? And then you can start scheduling that into your [00:06:00] lifestyle.
Paden: Yeah. That's interesting. You know, I I guess heard out there in the, in the world or the internet or whatever that Yeah. I mean, to some degree you can’t kind of catch up on sleep. Is that, is that I guess true or.."?
Catherine: Not really. I mean, you've lost a day of your life. You know, we have a certain number of days in our life and you have lost that day so yeah, sure. It being a good day, a healthy day. there's lots of not only performance implications of not getting enough sleep, but your physical health measurably declines, just the following day of not getting enough rest.
Paden: You know, and, I've kind of tracked sleep and stuff to some degree of my life kind of over the years, you know, just having like a, you know, a Fitbit, um, tracker so you can kind of get some, some decent data on, you know, your sleep quality and, the, amount of sleep. do you recommend anything like that or what, what's kind of your, uh, recommendations around that? Trying to measure it?
Catherine: Yeah, that's kind [00:07:00] of sticky subject because the, all the different wearables, are not a hundred percent accurate. And so then there's problems of people, basing their judgment or their actions on data that's not a hundred percent accurate and they are getting better. The other concern that I have is that we see people getting hyperfocused and it actually increases their worry and their vigilance around their sleep. And sleep is hard to do when you're being hypervigilant. So sometimes we see it contributing to the problem. So a great recommendation with the Fitbit or any kind of sleep tracker is to keep it for a week or 10 days at first. And then, you know, have like, okay, you know, I'm not getting enough hours or my sleep seems disturbed by external influences. Then do a little period, maybe two or three weeks where you're really working your strategy, but you're not [00:08:00] hyper-focused on the outcome. And then do another spot check of maybe four nights where you have two nights that you're on your work schedule. Two nights when you're off and see. Okay. What gains did I make and what's the next growth curve? That is a better way to do it.
Paden: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great advice. I think, you know, having a, a ton of data around sleep and or just anything, right. It people can get too lost in the data, not focus on the big picture. They're, they're, they're like measuring too often, right, measuring too often. Yeah, exactly. Not seeing the gains, right. That, that, yeah, I could see that as a problem. Well, Catherine, just kind of turning the conversation to you a little bit, give us a little bit about your background and kind of where you came from and how, how you became a sleep expert.
Catherine: Yeah, so I got [00:10:00] interested in sleep when I was, in college actually, and did some personal, you know, group projects, individual projects on sleep and. One of those projects we had to interview a living scientist. Okay. And so I reached out to one of the scientists who most of my, research papers that I was reading, referencing, uh, who had done and had this great conversation and, for graduation of undergrad, I asked my parents to send me as a graduation gift to the sleep meeting, the national sleep meeting. It was in Hollywood that year. And, I got to meet my sleep hero. Woo. Uh, so that was awesome. And then a couple months later, she called me and said, Hey, would you wanna come work as a research assistant and technologist in my research center? And I literally, it was one of those phone calls. You hang up the phone and then you jump up and down and scream. Yeah. So excited. Uh, I think that was maybe the only [00:11:00] time in my life I ever had a phone call that I responded like that. But um, yeah, so I worked as a sleep research tech. And then, I thought was thinking at that time, I want to go on to graduate school and you know, do I wanna be a medical doctor? Do I wanna be a researcher, psychologist? You know? And, uh, being from Seattle, I was familiar with the field of naturopathic medicine and I had this epiphany one day that I will approach sleep from the naturopathic viewpoint and. Naturopathic medicine, we really try to treat the cause, the root cause of the problem, not just mask, with symptom treatment. And we also try really to do what we call the least force medicine. That means, for in insomnia, for instance, we're gonna do behavioral and lifestyle type treatments first. Before we do those pharmaceuticals that can have negative [00:12:00] side effects. So we have a, a therapeutic order we call it, where we go from diet and exercise and herbs and light to medicines and surgery and chemotherapy.
Paden: And, Catherine, you know, on down that, that kind of, kind of like, uh, you know, less intervention, the better at, and I obviously not, as wise as you in these areas, but you see that like. Less intervention a lot of times like. Pharmaceutical or physical intervention is actually a better long term outcome.
Catherine: Yeah. So that's, um, so that's my stance. And a lot of naturopathic medicine also is based on the principle of dore. You know, dore is a word that means. Teacher doctor is a derivative of dore and so we really try to go back to that teaching people how to take good care of themselves so that they're empowered. Right? It's not very empowering when you just go [00:13:00] have to go to the pharmacist and get your drugs and, and insurance companies. Telling you how much those drugs are gonna cost or whether they're even accessible. It's much more empowering when you know, okay, if I get light in this way in the morning, if I get darkness in this way in the evening, I'm gonna sleep better and I can create that environment for myself.
Paden: Yeah. And that's, that's such great advice. And that's not just limited to obviously sleep. I mean, that's, that's really every area of your life is, you know, taking control of what you can take control of because we don't have control of most things, but the few things we do, we need to take control of.
Catherine: Exactly. Exactly.
Paden: So, um, what would you say has been the most impactful decision you've made? you know, you started in the research center. You were still looking at, you know, what, what path you wanted to go on. What, what would you credit as your best decision on that path?
Catherine: I think that the best decision that I made is to follow my interests, follow [00:14:00] my heart, around my career. I'd love my work. I absolutely love my work. There's times that I've thought, well, if I didn't love my work so much, I'd probably make more money because I just wanna spend my time doing something that I think is interesting and I'm good at, and I think is valuable. You know, I really believe in sleep medicine and, the positive impact that it can have on people. So that gives meaning to my day, every day. Mm-hmm. And, you know, being self-employed, being an entrepreneur is not always easy, but it becomes easy when I think, okay, what would I enjoy doing today? Today I would enjoy working with sleep medicine and helping people.
Paden: And you know, it's, once again, you get that choice, right? It's your choice to, to work on what you want. And, and when you're working on something that you're good at, you spend a lot of time in, you're interested in, you know, you have this lot [00:15:00] of knowledge. It, it feels good, right? And you
Catherine: Right.
Paden: Doing it right, like it's this positive feedback loop of, Hey, I've kind of become an expert in this. Hey, I really enjoy doing it. And it's amazing how like. You know, I always kind of say, you don't, you don't find your passion. You really develop it and you develop it by working really hard at something like, you know, diving into sleep and everything you dive into. Yeah. And, you start getting better at it. And it's amazing how that becomes your passion because now you're good at it and you love it and, and that kind of thing. So it's not like, most people when they first discover something, they're not passionate about it because they're not very good at it
Catherine: Mm. Yeah. Right. It gets to be this feedback loop.
Paden: Yeah. So another question here for you, Catherine. how would you define success kind of in your career entrepreneurship? You know, kind of from where you're at now, how would you define success? And then maybe secondary to that is how has maybe of that changed a little bit over your career? Or is it still the same?
Catherine: Yeah, I would say, [00:16:00] how I define success. I think spending your life on things that you value, your, you know, your life being the hours of your day and the days of your week, and. I think also having a positive impact and, you know, having enough income that you can be at ease financially and, um, you know, enjoy your days and have time off. You know, definitely having time off is something that, Americans struggle with. We have the least amount of time off of most countries in the world. Mm-hmm. I think, and, um, you know, rest and time off and sleep kind of are a continuum, right? Mm-hmm. So having enough financial success that you're able to have time to rest and have peace of mind while you're doing so. Uh, I think about rest versus collapse. Those are. Two very different [00:17:00] things.
Paden: And you know what you're talking about there. I'm sure you know, in the entrepreneur space, you are fighting probably the American culture a little bit, right? As in, you know, so much of a grind and hustle and, and, and all these things. And, and I'm very much, you know. In that kind of space. I, you know, I, I certainly value hard work. I'm certain starting to really understand that hard work is not obviously the whole picture. Right. Um, you need to work smart and, and then also be strategic, right? And it's, it's the, you know, I'll never sleep till I'm dead or, or whatever that. You don't understand how much efficiency you're losing by, by having that attitude. Right. You know, you think I'm just gonna grind this out, work way harder than everybody, but you're doing a way worse job because you're not taking those, strategic restful periods or, taking care of your sleep. That, that kind of thing.
Catherine: Yeah. And I'd like to take onto that with, a common. You know, it is a common misperception that the more hours we spend on work, [00:18:00] the better we do. We know from the, um, work efficiency data, you know, after eight hours, your, your performance is tanking and you're getting, like, in that ninth hour, you're getting 10% done that you got in the first hour. Yep. And along those lines, there's actually brain changes and perception changes with sleep deprivation that if you take someone who's well rested, then you sleep deprive them a little bit from, you know, eight hours to six hours for three days. The first day they say, I can tell I'm not doing as well. After one night of sleep deprivation, the second day, after the second night, they say, yeah, my performance is not as good. The third day they go, wow, I think that I adjusted. I got used to this sleep deprivation. Their performance is still going down, down, down, but somehow their mind has shifted to this new normal. I know we're all [00:19:00] sick of that phrase, but um. We have. And so, mm-hmm. Really, the amount, uh, that you're impaired when you're sleep deprived is equal to being drunk. So just think. Mm-hmm. Okay. Three nights of sleep deprivation. That third day I'm showing up with the performance of someone who's drunk. Is that gonna do well for you? Probably not long term.
Paden: Yeah, it is amazing how, how quickly our body, or I, I say more importantly, our minds adjust to that, to just kind of trick ourselves into believing that. Um, because objectively in our own minds, our perceptions are like, yeah, everything's fine. Um, but you don't, you know, you, you don't realize how slowly that, your performance is slipping there.
Catherine: Yeah. So the research shows that if you look at someone who's on that shorter sleep five nights a week, longer sleep for two nights, if you track them for six weeks on that schedule, week by week, performance just keeps going down, measurable performance, and that's well established. [00:20:00] Yeah.
Paden: You know, it's funny, so, you know, I'm a, uh, I'm a CPA by trade and a and a tax guy. And you know, tax season is always this big. Monster. Right? And, uh, for years, I was a guy that would operate on, I don't know, six and a half hours of sleep maybe. and a guy that I'd get up at 3 45, you know, be at the gym, be at, be at work by 5:00 AM um, because I had terribly designed my business that I literally needed to work that much to, uh, keep everything moving, which was stupid in my own right. But, You know what's amazing is, is I've changed a lot of stuff. I've changed my business a lot for where it's, it's, it's not necessarily the, the pure amount of hours I gotta work. and now when I'm in meetings and like, you know, we're kind of in the heat of tax season right now recording this and people can tell I show up different, um, I show up with way more energy. The stress level is way down. And, you know, my performance, I'm sure, [00:21:00] uh, you know, people, if we could somehow objectively measure that or, or rate that is probably off the charts as compared to what, you know, it has been in the last few years.
Catherine: That's awesome. That's awesome. what kind of motivated you, or what was the tipping point of making those changes?
Paden: That's a great question. Um, you know. It was just getting wiser to realize that, um, you know, I'm your typical American culture grind, you know, hard work, your puritan, you know, that, that whole culture
Catherine: uh huh,
Paden: Um, I get my value from how hard I work, right? Um, which is obviously, uh, not a, not a great idea, but I think it's just becoming, realizing, making the shift in, in really my entrepreneur journey from being like. I would say less of the, the fighter, the warrior, like the guy in the middle of the fight, day to day, to being more of like the leader and I use the analogy of like the king, right? The king kind of sets back here and makes the [00:22:00] decisions and moves his moves, the chess pieces around. It's really making that transition from the operator, the guy in the middle of it, to really, I get paid to make decisions. Right. And that's how I get paid is to move the pieces around and make decisions. And that has allowed me to alter my identity to some degree and detach from hard work. So it's, it's been a journey and you know, and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners that makes them feel kind of weird or like rest, just in general makes them uncomfortable because they're already, you know, high anxiety highwire to like just get stuff done. And, um, it, it's very hard for people like that or, and me, I'm totally in that, in that box to be okay not producing something in the moment.
Catherine: Ah, yeah. I think about, you know, the old sharpen the saw, right? Yeah. Sleep and rest is a way that we sharpen the saw and we come back and sometimes I think data can actually [00:23:00] help us overcome kind of some cultural training that the data shows people who get those seven to nine hours of sleep. They do better in life. They do better with their performance, they do better with relationships. Mm-hmm. And emotional intelligence. They do better with their longevity. They do better with their health. There's an issue in, um, medicine, kind of a new phrase of health span. You, you know, we've all familiar with the term longevity or lifespan that we want to have a good long lifespan. But we also want our health span to equal our lifespan. You don't want to grind, grind, grind. And then yeah, you're retired, but you're sick and you can't do those things that you work so hard to be able to do later in life. And, uh, help, sleep is definitely one of those principles and. You know when people are [00:24:00] challenging their way of doing things or conceptions of stuff, I really like for people to do an experiment. You know, just frame it as an experiment. Like if I get all the sleep that I need for 10 days, how much is that? But also, how does it impact my life? Do I actually feel better? Do I feel like I don't have to have three energy drinks during the day?
Paden: Mm-hmm.
Catherine: To spike my blood pressure and all that? Yeah.
Paden: And then crash off that later.
Catherine: Right. Yeah. And how does it affect my relationships? I think, getting along with people can be. Hard sometimes, but yet we want to get along well. We want to have good relationships with people. if I come into work or come home and I'm sleep deprived, I'm not gonna be able to tell Paden if my partner is happy or angry if I walk in the door. That is information that is gonna be useful Yeah. [00:25:00] For me, for our relationship. But just even having that empathy with others deteriorates measurably when we're sleep deprived. So for anyone who's having some conflict at home in the workplace, think about is it the sleep deprivation that's making me insensitive, basically and there's lots of different ways I could. You know, talk about emotional intelligence and how it deteriorates with deprivation.
Paden: Yeah. And I can a hundred percent my experience that, right. You know, when you're tired, you're just super irritable, everything's annoying. and like, you know, if I walk in the door, you know, I got a spouse and three kids there, and what, you know, as a dad, what kind of dad are you gonna show up as, right? Mm-hmm. If you're gonna gonna be that tired person, like. I'm no fun to be around. And whywould you wanna be around
Catherine: them?
Paden: Right. So it, it's just important, right? Yeah. Just to realize that you aren't, you know, [00:26:00] sacrificing your sleep. It's not, getting you closer to your goals. And, and in many ways it's getting you much further away
Catherine: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we want to be using the tools at our disposal really sensibly. And one of those tools is sleep. I mentioned the sleep quantity, which we talked about a lot sleep quality, and this is where I put in both those internal drivers of do we have a sleep disorder and external, you know, is there something in our environment waking us up? I would like to do a PSA that is, there are about 60 sleep disorders and I know some of your listeners today are already on board. They're using their sleep. tracker, they're wearable. They're doing all the things. They're listening to some podcasts about sleep. They're taking some of those, Action steps. If you are taking the action steps that you've learned, and you're not getting traction with your sleep, you could have an undiagnosed sleep disorder. We [00:27:00] think sleep disorders affect somewhere between 15 to 20, maybe up to. 30% of us, and they are largely undiagnosed. You know, the big one being sleep obstructive, sleep apnea, insomnia, restless leg syndrome. But there are many others. And, so this is an area that we don't wanna think it's all, on us. It's only our lifestyle choices. That's not true. You could have this disorder that needs to be, first of all, accurately diagnosed. And then accurately treated by a trained healthcare professional. Uh, so do consider that. 'cause I, I do hear from people for, so, you know, oh my goodness, I've been doing all of the things for six weeks, eight weeks, and I just know that they are being so diligent following the recommendations, but they're just not getting there. And in that case, go see a doctor.
Paden: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's some, some great advice. There could be something there that you just don't, you know, you don't even realize is there that that's stopping you from it. [00:28:00] Yeah. I love the analogy earlier you used about sharpening the saw. Right? And that's, that's interesting. You know, and, and the years ago, over the last few years when I was just killing myself in tax season, I'm sure I'm swinging a heck of a dull ax. Um, and not, not very far. Where if I would've just taken a little bit of time sharpening that. Um, my actions would've been a whole lot more effective instead of just beating my head against the wall, I'm not sleeping
Catherine: right.
Paden: Yeah, exactly. So that's been a great, conversation, Catherine. what's the best way people can kind of connect with you or get to know more about you and, and your expertise, uh, around sleep?
Catherine: Yeah, so I'm on social media, Instagram. Et cetera at Skilled Sleeper, that's my, handle. And I have a weekly newsletter called, be a Skilled Sleeper on Substack. So if you want to either look at the webpage or you could sign up that comes out once a week and really goes [00:29:00] into a topic and then always what to do around that. I'm very much about giving people the information, the sleep skills that they need. To be empowered to do what they need to do from their end to get the sleep that they need. so those are, uh, some free services and then you can check out skilledsleeper.com. I created a couple years ago, or last year, I did a deep dive and created some sleep online sleep courses that are customized to unique populations. And this is gonna be different because other sleep courses you might find are kind of generalized. These are very specific. I've got one for women's sleep 'cause women throughout the lifespan have more sleep complaints than men do. I've got one that's specifically for shift workers, which is about 20% of us. And absolutely there's challenges there that, need help. I've got one for first responders. So you'll see there's several that I really do a [00:30:00] deep dive and target the recommendations for that population. There's one for corporate, so uh, check those out and see if that's gonna serve your needs.
Paden: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing guys. You know, I'd, I'd check some of Catherine's stuff out at, at Skilled Sleeper. if you have any issues in that area and, and, and like, you know, say maybe you don't even have outstanding issues, but like, there's, there's always ways to better your environment, better, the decisions you're kind of making to increase that quality and stuff. Catherine, is there anything else you want to kind of leave, uh, the listeners for the show?
Catherine: One tip. All these recommendations you hear about light and dark. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Follow them in the morning. We need to get as much outside light and bright light as possible and is actually for three hours before bed is the recommendation. I know that that is. Very harsh, difficult, or impossible, but you know, for at least an hour or two purposely dim the lights. Maybe wear [00:31:00] blue blocking glasses if you need to be on screens or have the lights bright, but really try to replicate sunset hues because that helps your. Body know that night is approaching and it is time to switch into nighttime physiology. So I'll leave that last little tip and teaser out there for people. Yeah.
Paden: That's great advice. I think, uh, you know, man's quality of sleep has probably dropped, uh, dramatically in the last a hundred years or whatever with technology.
Catherine: Absolutely, absolutely. Too much
Paden: light right at nighttime.
Catherine: Absolutely.
Paden: Awesome. Well, Catherine, I appreciate you so much for coming on the show and listeners, we will catch you next time.
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Thanks guys.
