# Resilience beats optimisation

The endgame is performing well after a bad night — not a perfect sleep score.



## Takeaways

- Measure resilience: how you perform after bad nights.

- Protect the weekly average, forgive the outlier.

- Sleep should not be the centre of your life.



"I don't want you optimising your sleep, because optimisation turns into a giant routine before bed." The target instead is sleep resilience: you had a bad night, your flight got delayed, and you still executed.

The science of chronic restriction is sobering: two weeks at six hours a night produced impairment equal to two full nights without sleep — while people rated themselves only slightly sleepy. Resilience means protecting the average, not any single night.



## Sources

- The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation (Van Dongen HP, Maislin G, Mullington JM, Dinges DF, 2003)

- The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players (Mah CD, Mah KE, Kezirian EJ, Dement WC, 2011)

- Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society (Watson NF, Badr MS, Belenky G, et al., 2015)

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Educational summary of published research, not medical advice. Screening scores are not diagnoses. If a score is elevated or you feel unwell, talk to a clinician.

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