What seems to me to be one of the perennial myths about high performance is that you can do it on no sleep – this is the great con of the Silicon Valley tech executive. I have a friend who constantly boasts that they are in the office by 6.00 am every morning and that they don’t leave until well into the evening. I have two opinions about that – you are either doing your job incorrectly or it needs two people to do.
Traders are the same – they are constantly bleating on about how they stay up until the wee small hours to trade this and that market. Their mantra is that sleep is for the weak. Interestingly sleep is a well-studied subject and its role in high performance of any sort is well known. The two podcasts below are from the British Journal of Sports Medicine and while they relate to athletes the general concepts hold true for anyone trying to be their best.
