Can We Please Stop With the “4-hour-sleep” Millionaire stereotype
Being a millionaire is the new “cool”. Ask anybody what they are working towards and more often than not, the answer would always be something along the lines of being a millionaire. If you Google how to be a millionaire, you end up with more than a million search results in less than a second.
At the top are publications like entrepreneur.com, inc.com and Bloomberg just to mention a few that offer tidbits on how one can attain the “plutocrat” status. People are so desperate to attain it that some even go to lengths to fake it, staying true to the mantra — “fake it until you make”.
I won’t lie, I’m an avid reader of most of these publications and they do offer great insights and advice on financial matters. That said, I think it has gotten to a time we start debunking a few things before things get out of hand.
At the top of all the stereotypes is the question “how many hours do millionaires sleep”. You’ll often hear people say, sleep 4 hours and burst your a***#s off. And while I don’t disagree that hard work does pay, encouraging sleep deprivation is a much more dangerous alternative.
First of all, most of the millionaires and billionaires we aspire to be like got to where they were by going against what the society said. More often than not, these people were mavericks and rule breakers. They did not — and I’d like to believe still do not — believe in one size fits all which is essentially what the society wants us to do or be.
“This is the path, and thou shalt follow it” — said society
Then a bunch of interviews later and the paradigm shifted. Now it’s cool to be a maverick, now everyone wants to break the rules. Except the irony is, there are rules on how to break the rules? Yeah, pop culture does that to everything.
Because now we have a plethora of motivational speakers and life coaches saying you need to sleep at 11.00 p.m (most advice on 12:000 Midnight) and wake up at 5.00 a.m (4.00 a.m is the perfect time though) because that’s the time millionaires wake up.
Here’s the thing. I’d like to believe these people got to the level they are in because (other factors like background, timing et cetera ignored) they managed to operate at their peak performance. Going by that logic, I’d like to point out that that our biological clock for peak performance varies per individual.
Some people operate best in the morning, some in the evening whilst for others during the day is just fine. Albeit I agree that waking up early does give you more time to do a lot of things, sleep deprivation is worse. Give your body enough time to rest and rejuvenate. 7- 8 hours of sleep will not kill you but sleeping 4 hours will, eventually.
