Why we sleep? By Matt Walker

If you are looking for a ‘secret superpower’ in your life, this is it!

My friend Ankur told me of this book almost 14 months back, during after post-lunch stroll and I didn’t pay any heed to it. I mean, c’mon…why read about sleep when you have been doing it pretty much all your life, right? What more could a book teach you about sleep?

And boy, was I wrong! And how! The author is world’s foremost authority on sleep, and every page of the book is filled with new insights, most of them evoking a hmmm…. Or an aha! Amazingly well-written, and a hard-hitting book if you have been taking sleep lightly, like I was, all these years. While each chapter delves into various detailed topics around the details – types and phases of sleeps, role of each phase of sleep in human development, evolution of sleep, impact of modern lifestyles on the quality, needless to say the quantity, of sleep – quoting the right research and case studies, the final few pages of the book are full of practical insights on the changes you must make now to make sleep a priority!

A highly recommended read, and the following are the 5 things that I had got all wrong!

1) I can catchup over sleep over the weekend by sleeping in a longer, and taking afternoon naps.

2) I can ensure that I get adequate sleep by ensuring that I set my alarm a little later on the days when I get to bed a little later.

3) All sleep is the same, and hence the 40 mins nap I get on the train ride to work will count towards my 8 hour quota!

4) I am young, strong and a bit of lack of sleep cannot have any real damage to my work, brain function, or athletic abilities!

5) The Snooze Button is the best invention of human kind!

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