Apparently, I’ve had an overactive brain since birth.
My mother tells me that even as a baby, I barely slept. But I wasn’t crying. I was just lying there, wide awake, staring into space with what she described as wide-eyed curiosity. Several decades later, not much has changed. Insomnia is a reality I often have to deal with.
If you’re a leader who can’t seem to shut your mind off at night, this article is for you. Because here’s what that actually costs you at work.
Poor sleep doesn’t just make you tired. Research consistently shows it chips away at exactly the skills you rely on most as a leader. Decision-making becomes harder, takes longer, and in the end, you may not even make the best decision. Your ability to self-regulate your emotions is affected. You find yourself being less patient than usual, it’s harder to think clearly, and your energy isn’t at its best. There are days where you feel like you’re going on fumes.
The irony is that the higher the stakes, the harder it is to sleep. And the worse you sleep, the higher the stakes feel.
Many of the leaders I work with are intelligent, driven, and yes, they have very active brains. They lie awake replaying conversations, solving tomorrow’s problems, or just… thinking. Chronic insomnia isn’t a character flaw for people like us. It’s the tax we pay for thinking and caring deeply.
A 2024 American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey found that 74% of Americans reported stress as a cause of disrupted sleep, followed by anxiety (68%) and depression (55%).
But the cost of paying that tax, night after night, is real. And it’s worth addressing.
The reason my coaching philosophy is built around leading better AND living better is because you can’t separate the two. When work consistently spills into the rest of your life, both suffer – including your health, well-being, and relationships. These in turn can affect your performance, and the Catch-22 continues..
I’ve tried a lot of apps over the years to help me sleep better. Soothing sounds, nature noise, guided meditations that told me to clear my mind. (Clear my mind. Yeah, right.) Some of them worked occasionally. Most of them left me more frustrated than when I started, still wide awake when the session ended.
Then I found WikiSleep. (Full disclosure: I have no financial connection to this company. I’m sharing this purely because it has been a genuine game changer for me.)
The whole concept is built on something called cognitive diversion. The idea is simple: give your brain something just interesting enough to latch onto, and it stops generating its own noise. Historical accounts, biographies, fascinating facts. The stories are engaging enough to hold your attention, but calm and quiet enough that your body can finally relax. Before you know it, you’re asleep.
It works for me because my brain doesn’t want to be told to do nothing. It wants something to do. WikiSleep gives my mind something to focus on. And then I’m out like a light.
This is exactly the kind of small shift I talk about with clients. You don’t always need a major overhaul to get meaningfully better results.
Dave Brailsford took over as performance director for British Cycling in 2003. At that point, British cyclists had never won the Tour de France. Not once in over a hundred years of the race’s history. Brailsford’s philosophy was simple: break everything down into its smallest components and improve each one by just one percent. The pillow riders slept on when travelling. The way they washed their hands. The seat ergonomics. Tiny things, compounded. In 2012, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist ever to win the Tour de France.
Sleep is one of those improvements hiding in plain sight when it comes to your performance. More so than diet or exercise, sleep is the single most important factor in our health and performance. You can go without food for days, not so with sleep. And I don’t think I need to convince anyone reading this how differently you show up after a solid night’s rest versus a terrible one.
You don’t have to overhaul your whole life to lead better and live better. Sometimes it’s just about finding what actually works and tweaking it.