Lesson 2: You’ve got a unique sleep pattern that you need to discover and stick to for optimal mental performance.

For our early ancestors, sleeping was dangerous. You could easily be eaten by a predator if you dozed off at the wrong time! So the fact that they took the effort to make it possible and that we still do it today means that it’s vital to our health.

In the simplest terms, sleep rejuvenates our body and brain . Without sleep, you begin to suffer. Not getting enough rest has such an impact that doing it one week will give you a “sleep debt” the next. And if you only get six hours or less of sleep a night for five days, you’re just as cognitively impaired as if you’d gone 48-hours straight without sleeping!

While you might be thinking “I know I need to get to bed earlier” you actually might have a sleep cycle that’s just later. Understanding this and adhering to it is vital for good mental and physical health. According to research, people that know their schedule and follow it generally are intellectually stronger.