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Sleep Is the New Status Symbol for Successful Entrepreneurs (1999) (wsj.com)
42 points by dabit3 on July 22, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 26 comments



The article almost reads like a parody! Who would have thought that getting good, restful sleep would enhance cognitive ability and performance? Almost a "duh" statement.

I am however very interested in why we need as much sleep as we do. Certainly a product of evolution/biology but I am constantly amazed how little we know of what happens to our brain when we go comatose for 8 hours a night.

To another species/race it might actually seem frightening. What?! Humans go into a death like state every 24 hours?!


One function of sleep may be to clean up waste accumulated while awake. To run the cleaning process while awake may require more active energy consumption and was a way of conserving total energy in our evolutionary past when activity wouldn't be very productive anyways.

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2013/ninds-17.htm


So basically we run garbage collection for 8 hours every night.


> To another species/race it might actually seem frightening

Not sure about that. Many species do something similar for a longer period of time.


To someone from another planet it might - our sleep cycle has somewhat evolved around a day/night cycle, and animals hibernate based on changes in weather.


Surprised no one's doing the obvious startup metric joke.

Sex, Sleep, or Cashflow: choose one. If see that you're getting two, you're doing really well. If you're getting three, it's time to sell the company.


Biological health is now a status symbol among successful citizens of developed nations! Getting your basal metabolic calories and potable water? Sleeping the neurochemically-mandated amount? You must be the king of the world.


I realize you're being satirical, but these things are slowly starting to be a sign of success. Being able to eat the recommended daily amount of calories (no more, no less), staying active and sleeping well are starting to be signs of success and status instead of the norm. The higher up the success ladder you look, the fewer overweight, out of shape, sleep deprived, dehydrated people you tend to see.


Full-page screenshot for those who can't view: http://i.imgur.com/hDXXvIm.png


How did you take this screenshot? Thanks


In Firefox press Shift+F2, then type "screenshot --fullpage" in the command line at the bottom of the page. No addon, plugin or extension needed.


Wow! Thanks


I'm not sure how jd3 did it but I use a Chrome extension. If you just google full page screenshot Chrome you will see several options. There are also choices for Firefox as well. Here is the one I use on Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/full-page-screen-c...



Thank you!

This way I know that it is sufficient to read the first paragraph.


Easier just google "Sleep Is the New Status Symbol For Successful Entrepreneurs wsj" (note the wsj at the end). The link clears the paywall.


We need to register/login to read the article.


Yup, such a quick way to get me to close a tab though!


Agreed. It's such a horrible business practice and so easy to work around. Just copy and paste the title into google and click the link. Not sure why they bother. It is developing bad will.


http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Sleep+Is+the+New+Status+Symbol+for+Succ...

< The WSJ (and others) allow full viewing when referred by Google >


I don't see why that had to be an insulting animated "let me Google that for you link."


Do you know of another automated service?



There's a paywall from that source as well.


If you feel insulted by a link and an animation leading to helpful information then the problem isn't with the link and the animation.





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