Do you think the way you sleep plays a part in your success? Rest well – so you can play well? Sure thing. But, judging by our glimpse into the sleeping habits of well-known entrepreneurs, scientists, politicians and artists of all times, there is no right or wrong way to sleep – it’s about finding the way that works best for you.
Elon Musk
South-African born business maverick Elon Musk launched Tesla, the electric car and even his own space mission!
A passionate entrepreneur, investor, and engineer, he sleeps for six hours a night from 1 am to 7 am. He is known to have ‘camped’ in a sleeping bag in the conference room of his Tesla factory. A lesson in ‘productive sleep’ maybe?
Nikola Tesla
Tesla had a difficult relationship with sleep, managing only about two hours per night and several short daytime naps. This didn’t prevent him from gifting the humanity with some of the greatest inventions, such as alternating current, the induction motor and the spectacular Tesla Coil.
Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg is a mastermind behind Wordpress, world’s most popular blogging service. An American web developer and social media entrepreneur, Matt powers himself using the ‘Uberman’ method – six sleeping sessions a day, each around 40 minutes long, leaving around 2.5 hours between the naps to get on with his busy life.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Da Vinci was another follower of the ‘Uberman’ sleep method, which works best for polyphasic sleepers. This art and engineering genius had several sleeping sessions a day, lasting between 20 minutes and two hours. And used his waking hours to paint Mona Lisa, create a winged flying machine, a parachute, and a self-propelled cart, the pre-cursor of the modern-day car!
Charles Dickens
The author of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol is a prime example of how vivid imagination goes hand in hand with insomnia. Charles Dickens placed his bed to face north, believing it would improve his creativity, but this still didn’t help him sleep. So he roamed the streets of London until the son rose, which signalled it was time for him to go to sleep.
Michael Phelps
The U.S. swimmer with 16 Olympic medals sleeps in a high-altitude chamber, which imitates being at 9,000 feet high. Being at such altitude limits the flow of oxygen and makes his body work harder to create red blood cells, which supercharges his physical performance.
Marie Currie
The Polish and naturalised French physicist, Marie Curie pioneered radiography and won two Nobel prizes. She preferred to dedicate as much time as possible to working and studying, with sleep the least of her priorities, as she was known to pass out in the library due to exhaustion. Curie took to sleeping with a jar of radium next to her bedside, which led to hear untimely demise due to prolonged radiation exposure.
Indra Nooyi
The Indian-American former CEO of PepsiCo slept just 4 hours a night, to combine running one of the largest corporations in the world with being a Mum.
Ying-Hui Fu, a geneticist and biologist from the University of California, studies people like Nooyi and calls them ‘short sleepers’, stating that they can function very well on four to six hours of sleep per night and live long and healthy lives.
Albert Einstein
The author of the relativity theory, a Nobel prize winner and, undoubtedly, one of the truly genius minds, slept for 10 hours at night, followed by daytime naps. What a great consolation to those of us who love to sleep in and press the ‘snooze’ button time and time again!
The sleeping habits of the famous people are as distinctive as their gifts to the world! Explore and nurture your very own in the deep comfort of our Amrath Classic memory foam mattress!