In the Real World, there is one drug addiction that’s completely acceptable:  CAFFEINE.  No limit.  Any time of day.  Available in the forms of coffee, soda, tablets, even Snickers just came out with a caffeine infused bar!

This is the good gateway drug!  Caffeine allows us to maintain our youth staying up late, and then function in full the next morning alongside our seniors!  Without putting our lives in jeopardy!  And the only side effect seems to be overdosing on the exclamation point!

Well, not exactly.  Caffeine is a cover-up.  WAKE UP AND HEAR THE EXPERTS!

EXPERT #1:  Dr. Charles Czeisler, Director of Sleep Medicine for Harvard Medical School, advises that if you only sleep four or five hours a night, your performance level will be that of someone who’s been awake for 24 hours.  

EXPERT #2:  Christopher Drake, Senior Scientist with the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders and Research Center, validates exactly what we were taught in grade school – “the human body needs approximately seven to eight hours of sleep to maintain optimal alert levels during the day.”  But he goes on to dispel the myth that many accomplished people operate fine off of a four or five hour sleep.  “Imagine how much more brilliant and productive they would have been if they’d gotten more sleep.”

There’s the clincher.  As both a night owl and early bird – we think we’re going to build the ultimate nest egg.  And we are, in fact, winging it thanks to caffeine.  But how much higher could we be flying?

We won’t know for sure until we open our eyes to shutting them… three or so more hours each night.
 

Inspired by “Learning to Live Like an Early Bird” by Melinda Beck.
 The Wall Street Journal.  Tuesday, March 4, 2008.