Madonna, Margaret Thatcher and Donald Trump all claim to have thrived on four hours or less of sleep. If it’s good enough for the queen of pop and the Iron Lady, should entrepreneurs be worried about aiming for that magic eight hours a night?

While the National Sleep Foundation recommends adults sleep a minimum of seven hours, historical evidence suggests this hasn’t always been the case.

Extensive research [pdf] by historian Roger Ekirch shows humans have traditionally slept in two phases. In his book, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, he points to more than 500 references from historical texts that speak of dividing the night into two periods of sleep.

It appears it was common for humans to go to bed two hours after dusk, wake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours to smoke, talk, pray or even have sex, then go back to sleep until morning. It wasn’t until the 19th century that people began sleeping in one block.

Try a new sleep pattern

When entrepreneur Ryan Farley, co-founder of US business Lawnstarter, heard about biphasic sleeping he was intrigued. He and business partner Steven Corcoran were struggling to get enough sleep while trying to launch the company, so wondered whether sandwiching a couple of hours’ work between two sleep cycles would make them more productive and efficient.

They needed distraction-free time to work on coding the website and business-development time for meetings and phone calls. Farley says: “We slept two times per night, about three hours each, doing the programming in between those periods of sleep when it was quiet and there was nobody there to distract us.”

He found that adjusting his sleeping pattern in this way allowed him to start each working period – daytime and night – with a fresh mind. Farley admits he didn’t like waking up each time but says once he was awake he felt great.

They had to stop the pattern after a while because, as the business grew, they had too much to do during the daytime. But could biphasic sleeping be a short-term solution for other busy entrepreneurs?

Sleep experts advise against working during the night. But Kathryn Pinkham, a sleep therapist at The Insomnia Clinic in Nottingham, says aiming for an eight-hour sleep target could cause unnecessary stress. “You’d be better off getting six hours of quality sleep than eight hours of fractured sleep,” she says. “Find the amount of sleep that suits you and stick to it. It’s about quality of sleep, not quantity.”

Kaan Aydogmus, founder of London-based design and communication agency Magnetic, gets just five to six hours sleep a night – if he’s lucky. The demands of running a global business that operates across different time zones means he is often jet lagged from travel or waking up at the crack of dawn for international conference calls.

“I love my job but at the same time I am aware that the lack of sleep is becoming a problem,” he says. “I have to have my morning coffee to be able to function, but then I just crack on. I am trying to find ways to manage it because if I don’t it is going to be full blown insomnia.”

Most entrepreneurs have at some point struggled to get enough quality sleep, but with insomnia a leading cause of lost productivity, what can sleepless small business owners do to get a good night’s rest and improve their performance during the day?

Wind down

According to The Sleep Council – a non-profit organisation that aims to help people improve their sleeping habits – it’s important to spend time unwinding before going to bed. That might include taking a bath, listening to music or reading a book. As well trying more unusual ways to relax, such as walking barefoot in the garden (an exercise which some early studies claim not only reduces stress, but can boost overall health), Aydogmus has found meditation particularly helpful in calming the mind before bed time.

Mindfulness – a Buddhist meditation practice that involves focusing concentration on a particular word or sound to achieve a relaxed, non-judgmental awareness of your thoughts, feelings and sensations – has been found to help fight insomnia and improve quality of sleep.

Sleep and dream expert Charlie Morley teaches mindfulness as a tool to helping people sleep more easily. He suggest 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation before bed to bridge the gap between wakefulness and sleep.

It’s also important to go to bed feeling tired; avoid the temptation to go to bed early, says Pinkham.

By going to bed a little later, you will increase your appetite for sleep. The larger your appetite, she says, the better chance you have for going to sleep quickly and sleeping through the night.

Pinkham explains: “Fractured sleep is more likely if you are going to bed too early. You wake up feeling frustrated and before you know it you associate that emotion with being in your bed and that becomes a habit.”

It’s also important to stick to a regular wake up time, she adds, so set your alarm for the same time every morning.

Switch off

Smartphones and tablets mean many entrepreneurs now take their work to bed with them. Instead Aydogmus chooses to go to bed “the old-fashioned way”, resisting the temptation to check emails or watch late-night television in favour of reading a good book.

Part of the problem is the artificial blue light these gadgets emit. Exposure to this before bedtime suppresses the production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.

Dan Gandesha, chief executive of crowdfunding platform Property Partner, admits juggling a business with raising a six-month old baby that needs attention throughout the night has taken its toll on his sleep. While he leaves his phone on at night, he’s reduced the distraction of emails by setting up an automated filter that only alerts him to messages from important contacts.

Beating the 3am blues

“If I can’t sleep at night because I am thinking about work, I will get up and write down what is on my mind,” says Gandesha. “It is usually something you have forgotten and the worry that you will forget keeps you awake. So jotting those things down is good for clearing your mind.”

Pinkman, meanwhile, advises restless entrepreneurs to stop staring at the clock, get out of bed and move to another room. This is a means of breaking the negative associations that they may have with the bedroom through engaging in stressful activities, such as lying awake worrying or answering emails. “Get into the habit of doing daytime activities in the day only.”

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