Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Sleep Expert Pat Byrne on Sleep Science & Leveraging Technology

Episode Date: March 29, 2017

This conversation with Pat Byrne is really about the building of an entrepreneurial venture based on sleep technology. The importance of getting quality sleep is a well accepted principle, research based, and on average we need to get somewhere between seven to eight hours of sleep a night to be the best version of ourselves, to be vibrant, and to have the capacity to think clearly and quickly. Pat has been one of the pioneers in the field that have been able to bridge well-accepted principles in research with emerging technology. There's so many gems and nuggets in this conversation about sleep and where he comes from and how he’s dedicated his life efforts and why he's become a game changer. He’s definitely shifted the way that professional sport franchises, at least many of the ones that I've been involved with or have friends that have been involved in others, have been able to think about sleep. Before he came along with this technology, there was the talk of how important sleep is but now there’s actually a way to monitor it. I hope that this conversation reveals Pat’s genius._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. The brain, as you know, is like our CPU. It controls everything we do. Sleep is an important brain function. It's not just something we do. It's an important brain function. The analogy that I use is kind of like when you go to sleep, your car goes into the garage, all these mechanics come out, they clean it up, they gas it up, they change the oil, they, you know, they get it ready. And when you wake up, you're good to go

for the day. You know, when you're not getting enough sleep, your car is coming out of the garage with a half a tank of gas, and you end up crashing. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the frontier, who are on the path of mastery, who have a command of the nuances of their craft, people who are changing the way we understand how an industry works. And we want to understand how they see the world, how they see themselves in it,

the unique journey that has led them to that point of view. And we also want to dig deeper to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time.

And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already

know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter, more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat,

and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein,

just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters.

And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash Finding Mastery. Now, this conversation is with Pat Byrne. And the conversation is really about his building an entrepreneurial venture based on sleep technology. And the importance of getting

quality sleep is a well-accepted principle, research-based. And on average, we know that we need somewhere between seven and eight hours sleep to be our best version of ourselves, to be vibrant and to have the capacity and brain capacity to think clearly and quickly and all that good stuff. Now, what Pat's done is he's been one of those pioneers in the field that have been able to bridge well-accepted principles in science with emerging technologies. And there's so many gems and nuggets inside this conversation about sleep and where he comes from and how he's dedicated his life efforts and why he's become a game changer. He's definitely shifted the way professional sport franchises operate. He's had an impact in the industry. That's a phenomenal statement.

Before he came along with this technology, there was the talk of how important sleep is. And now there's actually a way to monitor it. So it is a game-changing experience in pro sports. So I'm so excited to get into this conversation to introduce Pat, if you're not familiar with his work. And for those of you who are not familiar with his work, I just hope that this conversation really reveals his genius. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Pat. Pat, how you doing? Hey, Mike, I'm great.

Yeah, very cool. So this is a conversation that I think about a lot, not actually the conversation, the topic of conversation. I think about it so much, which is sleep and quality sleep and quantity sleep and getting that right as a recovery platform for a competitive advantage. And you and I met a number of years ago in elite sport, and I've been fascinated about what you've done in the space as a business person. And then also as a, you know, a scientist that's working to understand it at a rich level. So, Pat, can you first introduce how you came interested in sleep? And then we're going to wind back from there.

So just start with that conversation about sleep. Absolutely. You know, and this goes back a few years. In the mid-1980s, I was what's called an appeal commissioner here in British Columbia, which is certainly in the U.S. It's the equivalent of an appeal court judge in the administrative law courts, mostly dealing with occupational health and safety issues. And I actually thought I knew what I was doing. I was the Canadian director on the board of what's called IOHA, which is part of the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization, dealing with, you know, sort of global health and safety issues. But one day I got a phone call from my brother-in-law. And it turns out my 22-year-old nephew fell asleep driving home from

work one night and drove his car off a cliff and died. Oh my goodness. How old was he? 22. And he was not only my nephew, he was my godson. And a few years uh previous to that i'd watched him play basketball in the in the provincial championship and he his challenge there was to guard steve nash so um um how did you know what they were they were pretty much tied at halftime but then steve was obviously the best player on the floor and he went on to win, you know, whatever. My nephew went on to study forestry, but worked really long hours. And for me, as a health and safety professional, I was shocked. You mean people fall asleep driving home from work and die?

Like, what is this? And I had called my colleagues that I've known for many years from all over the world. And actually, nobody at that point was even talking about the issue. So that started my journey in terms of trying to figure out what sleep had to do with, at that point, dying on the job and eventually going into how do we make athletes better athletes. Okay, so it started with some pain yes okay and then so people have heard me say this often i just wonder if you would agree or or maybe this conversation is clouding the objectivity you could have in this statement but would you agree or disagree with the thought that the reason people change is because of pain?

Part of it is pain. I think it would just snap my head around. It's like throwing cold water on your face, whether you call that pain or something else. It shakes you out of where you are in the world. How did that shape you? What's the right way to think about this? What level of significant alteration in your life course did that event and the loss of your loved one shape the current state that you're in now, the current person you're in now?

Right. It was 100% change. It was like 180 degrees. I actually quit my job as an appeal court judge. What does it take to become an appeal court judge in Canada, right? Right. I had spent 20 years in the system. I had worked in the asbestos litigation in the United States and Canada. I spent literally 20 years and was appointed by high-level people to hear cases and went to law school. I didn't graduate from law school, but I took some law school classes. Yeah, so it was 20 years of work.

Oh, so to be an appeal judge, you do not need to have a law degree? I was one of the few that didn't. What are you guys doing up in Canada? They actually want people to know something about the subject they're dealing with. That's loaded. That is such a loaded answer. That's so good. We should not talk about systems right now, governmental systems in particular.

Yeah, you don't want to go there yet. Okay, so then how did you get into that field, like want to be in the law field? And now we're winding further back. Yeah, I didn't actually – that wasn't ever interesting to me. I was a health and safety, much like sort of an OSHA inspector in Canada. And one day the head of the legal department in our governmental organization called me up because I'd done a lot of work on asbestos. And he said, you know what, we want to sue the asbestos companies. We think that they're causing death and destruction amongst hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of workers in our province, and we're going to sue them them can you help me with this and i go what can i do and he goes

well can you go to south carolina and i'm going yeah i can do that um so i ended up working with ron motley who most people don't know but if you google him he was uh he is probably considered the most important trial lawyer ever in the United States. He bankrupted virtually all the asbestos companies. He bankrupted the tobacco companies. And he did the 9-1-1 litigation. And I got to spend four years with him and also the President of the Canadian Bar Association as well, another guy named J.J. Kemp. And I had to travel all over the U.S. and Canada and in Europe with the two of them and asked a whole lot of stupid questions about law.

And so when we got settlement mechanisms, so all the victims and their families got money from this, I decided I'd have to go back to my old job. And they said, well, that's probably not going to happen. And I thought, well, that was my career. What am I going to do? And then I got a phone call one day from a senior government official who said, can you come to lunch?

And how would you like to be a senior field judge? And I'm going, okay. We're going to send you to law school. So, I mean, that's what it came about. It was just working with some, and that's how I've learned throughout my entire career is learn from really, really smart people and ask a whole lot of stupid questions.

And then how do you get to smart answers if you're asking dumb questions? I mean, I think they're dumb questions. They obviously didn't. Yeah, I know. You're doing that little funny thing, right? Yeah. So you're just – I'm joking too, like in a dry way.

Like you're asking questions. You're learning. That's your process to learn. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I guess neither of us are very funny because neither of those jokes worked. No, but, but, but, but, but you're absolutely right. And that's how

I've learned everything, everything in my career from whether it's sleep or fatigue or sports, everything I've learned from just connecting with really smart people and asking them hard questions. Okay. I want to ask you what I think are, I don't know if they're hard or not, so I don't want to put you on the spot with anything, but there are questions that I can't quite sort out. And that's like the technical part of the sleep conundrum, if you will, and the mechanisms and the mechanics to be a better sleeper as well. So let's hold that for a moment. So can you wind us back to what early life felt like? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in northern Canada, which is up near that.

It was a little town called Fort Nelson, which is in the late 1950s, early 1960s. And it was the head of the U.s army headquarters for the building of alaska highway my father was a carpenter that lives up there and the town was probably 1500 people and we had in those days no radio no television um no magazines no newspapers basically what we got was from school and the school i went to was the old U.S. Army barracks. We had outdoor toilets, seriously. So you had to go up minus 40 and go to the bathroom. Come on. Yeah. And so...

What did that teach you? Resilience. I thought that was the world. I mean, we had a neighbor who was killed by a cougar. Right. I remember waking up, opening our front door one day to go outside. It was we had these books we used to read at school. I saw these kids flying kites. And I thought, man, I'd love to have a kite. I want to build one of those. And so my father was a carpenter, so we had a lot of material around, excess material. So I took a bunch of two-by-fours and nailed them together in the shape of a kite and tied a rope to it and dragged it around the arc.

And shockingly, it didn't fly. What it taught me was that I can't invent anything and I can't build anything, but I can't invent anything and I can't build anything, but I can learn from this. No, seriously, Pat, was that an insight you had at that moment? Or is that looking back like that was the first time that you were? I think part of that was looking back, but part of it initially was,

and I was just talking when I was seven, eight years old, was, oh my God, I can't build anything. I mean, I was kind of entrenched in my mind at the time. It's like, oh, you don't know how to do this. Yeah. And so that kind of carried through. And then when I was in high school, my parents moved down to what's called Lower Mainland, which is the Vancouver area, went to high school there. And it was the same thing i mean the education i had in northern canada wasn't that great um and when i was in my junior year in high school which is we call grade 11 here um i was failing chemistry like seriously failing chemistry and the teacher came to me and he said look i will pass you in chemistry 11 if you promise not to take

chemistry in grade 12. I'm going, oh my God, thank you. I will do this. Unfortunately, between... Did you not understand it? Or did you not apply yourself? I couldn't understand the concepts. It just was foreign to me. It was a trying to learn mandarin it was i just i didn't understand anything and unfortunately during that summer i'd met a girl um that i'd fallen in love with my high school girlfriend and she was taking she was really bright in science and she was taking chemistry 12 the senior year so i thought i just want to be with her so i took it anyways

oh there you go so are you a little bit of a rule breaker um bender yes bender breaker sometimes um i pretended i didn't hear what he had to say uh and i didn't actually do that well i passed chemistry 12 mostly because i was looking over my girlfriend's shoulder and did it. But that always bothered me that there was something that other people were getting that I couldn't get. How did you internalize that? Like, what did you do? Or how did you explain that information? a challenge. Like I, I, I felt like there was something missing in me and I didn't know if it was missing in me or missing in my teachers or missing in how it was taught, but it frustrated me. And so, so if you were to have a hundred conversations with yourself in the span of two weeks, let's just say about this thing that we're talking about, would you make it about yourself? Like, damn, what is wrong with me? Or would you make it about them? And then I got a part two question, which is, is it something that's temporary or was it more permanent

the way that you would explain it? For me, it was about me, not them. So you would internalize it. Right, because I thought, you know what, in all other areas, whether it was playing sports at the time or the other courses I took, I thought I was even with everybody else in the class. But I just couldn't get any of this. I thought there was something wrong with me. And so your self-esteem will take a hit from that, but you can get better. You give yourself a better chance of getting better when you're like, well, I need to do something about this.

Yeah. So you know what I did? When're like, well, I need to do something about this. Yeah. So you know what I did? When I went to university, I majored in chemistry. No kidding. I just said, okay, I'm going to tackle this head on. And so I went to Western Washington University in Washington State and ended up with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a master's degree in biochemistry. So when you say that out loud, what happens for you? For me, it was like, okay,

I sort of slayed the dragon. And when you say that now, what happens when you say it now, even in this conversation? It's emotional for me. Yeah. It's a victory. It's like winning something, right? It's like, oh my God, this was something that I couldn't do and I wouldn't give up. Okay.

So Pat, you're a disruptor in the field of sleep and technology. And I don't know if you're going to say that about yourself, but I'll put that out there. And then, so let's stay on this for just a moment. Is that how did you do that? How did you go from, oh my God, this professor doesn't believe in me. I'm struggling. I can't do it. It's me that's broken.

It's not them predominantly. And then to actually get a university degree in it. It's me that's broken. It's not them, predominantly. And then to actually get a university degree in it. How? I'm not even sure I know the answer to that. For me, it was a void. It was a challenge. It was something that was missing in my life. It was something I needed to answer. And what did that feel like? Was it like in your body? Was it in your mind? Like, how did that emptiness happen? I think it was in both. I felt completely unfulfilled. I felt like this was, there was something in my mind that said, look, you know, my confidence in a lot of other areas was you can do anything if you put your mind to it. But I wasn't able to accomplish that in chemistry or biochemistry.

And I thought, well, I need to find a way to make that happen. And so I just pushed myself. In fact, after my third year in university, I'd finished all my fourth year classes in chemistry. I had teachers that were able to explain concepts to me, and all of a sudden the light bulb went on. It was like, it was a consumption. And you know what I get like, this is going to sound hubris or arrogant. I don't mean it to be by any means, but like in the, in that space, I feel like I really, I see something like I see something inside of the way that I see other people's minds. And it's like, I love that. Like, I don't know where it comes from, but something, something was switched on early on. I think you have that same thing on taking insights from other people, practices from other people, science that other people have built and turn it into a disruptive business. Yeah. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. I mean I kind of consider myself an innovator. Like I can't create or invent anything. My kite is a good example. But what I see is the way to take technology that's used in one space and innovate it and use it in another space. And that's what I did with sleep.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts,

and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3, protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy.

They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERy for 35% off your first subscription order at LiveMomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, LiveMomentous.com. And use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Grey.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and

bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Greys in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray.

You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Okay. All right. So then you're switched on about sleep. You had somebody that you lost a loved one. And you said, what is going on here? You took a deep dive.

You went into research. And what did you research? I'm imagining you researched the sleep condition for humans. And that probably took you to military studies is is that where you went for the most part yeah and i think you know and it's important to keep in context what's happened with sleep research which is incredibly new everything we know about sleep was was in my lifetime. I was born in 1953. And when I was born, there was one scientist in the world doing sleep research, Nathaniel Kleitman at the University of Chicago. And it was generally considered the dregs of sleep, dregs of research.

And in fact, Watson and Crick had published their papers on DNA six months before any major research was ever published on sleep. No kidding. Okay. When did you enter the scene i entered the scene in uh probably night wherever probably 10 11 years ago from now okay so i i came into it um there was nothing going on they didn't have any there was no way to measure sleep and so my background in occupational health and safety is really is in a field called occupational hygiene which has to do with chemical and and biological safety you know around for workers and the premise for all of them is to be able to

measure risk and to fix it. I used that model looking at sleep from a health and safety perspective saying, how do we measure sleep? How do we measure fatigue? How do we measure accident risk? How do we fix it? What I discovered was virtually nothing was in the marketplace. Zero. I found pieces of it. So what I found was that in sleep research, they had what's called medical grade actigraphs, which we now call sleep watches, these big bulky things. And you have to take the raw data, which is zeros and ones essentially and and transcribe it and figure

out what's going on whether people are awake or whether they're asleep um and then i also discovered that the u.s air force and the u.s army had created technology that um that if you knew this when people slept and how well they slept, we could predict their reaction time and their accident risk. And it was the U.S. military technology that completely fascinated me. It was developed after the first Gulf War. It's called mission planning software. So they used that to plan the B-1 bombing missions. They used it for all of

that. And I just found a way through various contacts to get a copy of it and have licensed it and used it and eventually bought the global commercial rights to it. And what did you buy and what did they do? And so what I bought through my company at the time was the commercial rights, not the military rights, but the commercial rights to the software that can turn sleep data into performance data. So they were tracking sleep and then based on that tracking, they would have some sort of inferences that they would make and then from that they would make recommendations on performance yes absolutely you could tell people's reaction time and it was it was highly accurate in fact now it's even used by every airline in u.s um it was it was uh there was a recent program. It was last year. The U.S. Air Force tried to get more money for investment, and they listed the commercial work that I did around that program as one of their top 20 success stories in the last 20 years of taking their technology and commercializing it.

How cool is that? Okay. Congratulations there. Yeah, it was pretty cool. That's a nice investment in the U.S. military. So that being said, can you even more concretely talk about what they were measuring and what they were finding and what that reaction test is? Sure. It's a simple PVT, what's called a psychomotor vigilance task. you slept with your reaction time. And so then what they did was they spent about $20 million and created software that could predict

that. Okay, so so so my wheels are spinning here, because now you took that and then how did you commercialize it? Well, what we did was i realized that the the medical grade actigraphs that were being used were terrible they were not waterproof nobody wanted to wear them they were too big i bought a bunch of them i got a drawer full here if you want them um um you know i'd mail them all over the world to companies and and they would get broken into mail so i thought you know what there's got to be a better way to build with the same technology, a resilient product. And so my analogy is I kind of went from sort of tube technology from tube TV technology to circuits. And I mean, I didn't know how to build it. I mean, I can't build a kite,

but I knew that it could be built. And so I just partnered with various companies to build a sleep watch and got it FDA approved and then married it up with the U.S. military technology that can measure fatigue. So now the product that's on the market not only measures your sleep in real time, but it can also tell you how fatigued and tired you are in real time. Okay. So you were, and do I have it right? Because I might've had this wrong, that you were one of the first movers, not the first, but one of the first movers in the sport performance arena with a watch basically that you could wear that would give you information about sleep.

And I know that there were some others that were, well, I don't know. Let me just ask naively. Where were you placed in that? Yeah, I'll be modest and say I was the first person to do it. Seriously. Absolutely no one, and this goes back 2007, 2008. Absolutely no one was doing that in professional sports. That's what I thought.

I mean that's when I was first exposed to your work. I was like this is really disruptive. And it wasn't as good as it is now. Like you've come a long way as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very manual. We had to take the data off the watch and manually put it into the military technology. And so what happened with that was in 2008, because I'm in Vancouver, the Vancouver Canucks National Hockey League team hired a new president general manager, a guy named Mike Gillis. And Mike, my office was literally across a bridge.

You could walk to the arena. And within about a month of him being there, I got a call from one of his staff saying, you know, we understand you work in this space. Can you come and talk to us about it? And I said, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can tell you what I'm doing in industry with this, right, to try to prevent work-related, fatigue-related accidents. So anyways, so i showed up and in the office was the entire senior management the entire coaching staff

and all the medical staff and my introduction from my gillis was hi this is pat burn you got 30 minutes an hour and a half later they said when can you start and that was the beginning for literally for all professional sports of how we started using sleep monitoring sleep to help players and perform better and how help teams make better decisions that's brilliant yeah okay so Okay. So let's, can we dive into some of the science for just a little bit? Okay. Now, if it's too rich or too deep or not deep enough, because I don't really know what I don't know on sleep, and I know just enough to know how to help people sleep better, but I've got some thoughts underneath I want to try to unpack. Sure. Okay. So if we're, if we're going to look at sleep, stress, and the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access, the HPA,

if we look at those three functions, I guess, functions and structures, what do we need to know about how those interplay with each other. And then the more applied question is, how can we manipulate sleep and or stress to positively impact the HPA? Wow. Okay. I haven't spent a lot of time in HPA, I can tell you that.

But let me tell you what my view of sleep is. And because I've been very fortunate in the last couple of years being working with some of the very senior people at Stanford University Medical School around these issues. Sleep is a very complex process. It really is. Right. And the sort of traditional wellness model is nutrition, exercise, and sleep.

And I don't believe that you don't no no because here's how i view sleep the brain as you know is like our cpu it controls everything we do sleep is a is a is an important brain function it's not just something we do it's an important brain function the analogy that i use is kind of like when you go to sleep your car goes into the garage all these mechanics come out they clean it up they gas it up they change the oil they you know they get it ready and when you wake up you're good to go for the day right and so the the sleep is in such an incredible important function um and and that when you know when you're not getting enough sleep your car is coming out of the garage with a half a tank of gas right and you end up crashing right i mean

or you're running out of gas or you know the oil isn't what it should be um and so i've used i've used sleep that way but but but sleep is affected by an incredible number of things part of it is and you is that you talked about the dsm so mental disorders right sleep disorders and organic diseases and the drugs you're taking recreational uh over-the-counter, prescription drugs, all have an impact on your sleep. One of the downfalls of trying to analyze sleep is it's become very, let's look for the right word here, very unidimensional. And so, you know, if you have a sleep disorder you go to see a sleep specialist they don't deal with all of the other issues you're dealing with right if you have a mental disorder you go to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist you deal with that and so one of

the great things about our medical profession in the last decade or last century is specialization right and it's and specializing whether you're you know cardiologist or you know pediatrician or whatever you do is created great benefits to our society the problem is we're not a bunch of jigsaw puzzles all taped together we're a holistic person and as sleep research has evolved we're not paying attention and we don't have access to deal with all of the various issues. And so, in fact, if you want to get your sleep dealt with in an effective way, you need to see a psychiatrist, a psychologist, an internist, a sleep specialist, and the list goes on. And they don't talk to each other in our system. And so that's what excites me about what I'm involved with now more than anything

is the system I'm involved with at Stanford, which deals with all that. Because sleep is so important, and we're not dealing with it in a holistic way. Okay. So before we get to the venture that you're doing, I want to go back to some functional stuff here. Sure. Is that on the sleep side of things, can you maybe guide us on a couple of thoughts? Like these are really practical thoughts, right? Sure. Which is what are the three most important ways for people who are running and gunning and hard charging and they're modern day lovers of engagement.

What are the three things that we could do to improve sleep? Okay. Assuming you don't have any mental health issues, assuming you're a perfectly healthy person. Do you know anyone like that? No. But assuming you are. Yeah, let's assume that you're above the line, things are pretty good, you maybe got a little garden variety anxiety, depression, something like that, but you're hitting the ground running. So you deal with what's called, I broadly called what's called sleep hygiene okay and so that certainly the two most

critical areas is is darkness and and noise and how dark and how how okay yeah okay here's so literally this time of year i put cardboard i tape cardboard over my bedroom windows if you can hold your hand up within a foot of your face and you can still see your hand, it's not dark enough. Okay. And that's once the lights go out and you give yourself just a moment to acclimate. And then a foot in front and you can see it is not dark enough. Okay. Why is that?

Because we're diurnal animals, right? So we're biologically programmed to be awake in the daytime and sleep at night. And what triggers melatonin production is darkness, right? That causes you to go to sleep. So the more light you're exposed to, the less melatonin you have, right? And the harder it is to get to sleep and to stay to sleep. And that's related to blue lights and digital TVs and phones and apps and all that, right? Absolutely.

Yeah. So that inhibits melatonin production. Blue light. Blue light. Absolutely. And how long does it take, Pat, once you're looking at a screen, how long does it take for your system to clear the effects of the suppressed melatonin? Yeah, I'm not sure the research entirely cleared this area, but certainly 30 to 60 minutes.

Okay. So that's a hand grenade fair statement, 30 to 60 minutes. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, keep going. So that's dark. That's definitely dark. And then if you can't get it dark, are you suggesting like put something over your eyes or like how important is the darkness?

Yeah, darkness is critical. I mean, I've flown all over the world forever and I'm one of these people that can't put things. I'm claustrophobic, so i can't put anything on my face it drives me crazy so but there are people that can so if you can wear eye shades great okay cool and so of the tips is darkness more important less important than quiet and are those two more important less important than uh the consistency of sleep to wake up time? It's hard to rank them because there's so much sort of individual variation, but certainly darkness is absolutely critical for everyone. Noise, you can put earplugs in, right? I can't do that again because I don't like the sensation.

So noise is very disruptive. And consistency is critical. And that's the problem with a lot up at the same time, you know, it's really been helpful in terms of getting people to get the sleep they need. Okay. And then, um,

okay. Eight hours. Is that still, does research still hold that on average 80% or so of the population benefits from around eight hours, right around eight hours? Yeah, I think that's right.

There's some human variability around everything in life. And so they basically say seven and a half to nine hours, depending on your age. A lot of professional athletes that I work with are still teenagers. And the human brain isn't fully developed until they're 24, 25. And so they're often on this sort of adolescent circadian rhythm when they're playing professional sports. But the teams don't often recognize that. But yeah, so eight – and a lot of the work that Sherry Ma and others have done around in professional sports basically has shown that if you can actually get eight hours, you can improve your athletic performance. And she also found – Sherry also found that there's no benefit above 10 hours.

Interesting. Stanford, Maurice Ohayon, who's, I forget his title, right, but he's basically the head of sleep epidemiology research at Stanford and public mental health. What he says is if you're consistently sleeping 10 hours or more, you'll be dead within five years. There's something seriously wrong with the system. Exactly. And the analogy that I use is saying, look, if your car is going in the garage and instead of getting fixed in eight hours, it's taking 10 hours to try to get it fixed and it comes out still not fixed. There's something seriously wrong with your vehicle. We got some leaks. Yeah. Okay. Cool thought. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself,

my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you, that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating. If you're ready to upgrade your

rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. that's a great discount for our community again the code is finding mastery for 40 off at cozy earth.com finding mastery is brought to you by caldera lab i believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things and for me that includes how i take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be

interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash findingmastery.

Okay, so then can you talk through the difference between sleep quality and sleep length yeah absolutely yeah increase both to an optimal level i guess well humans don't get to choose well you get to choose your sleep length sometimes you have choices around that but you don't get to choose your sleep quality um so the brain does what it wants to do right it's it's completely independent and sleep is a involuntary process not a voluntary process okay i mean you can push it back right you can you can you can force yourself to stay awake but at some point the brain just shuts down and goes to sleep.

It gets tired of you trying to keep it awake. And so, I mean, if sleep was a voluntary process, we wouldn't have insomnia. Cool thought, yeah. And so it's an involuntary process. And so when you go to sleep, your brain takes over and it tries to repair itself it tries to clean itself up it tries to get you ready you know puts out the right hormones and enzymes at the right times to try to repair your body and as i said it's like getting your car in the garage with you know 20 different mechanics working on your car overnight right and if you don't give them the time to do that,

then you're not going to have it properly repaired. Are those hormones, is it human growth hormone and testosterone? Are those two of the most important or are there other ones that are also, I'm sure there are, but I guess the best way to ask that is what are the main hormones and what are the main enzymes that are at play? You know, I'm not a great to ask that is what are the main hormones and what are the main enzymes that are at play? You know what? I'm not a great expert in that area. I know that there's a lot of research showing that, for example, for repair of back injuries, for example, that the body will put out repair hormones during certain hours in the night say

between one and three in the morning there's a fair bit of research around that and so if you're depriving yourself of sleeping at night um you're you're depriving yourself of uh repair mechanisms for your whole body and again i said you know that sleep is such a new science. And like, literally, I spent half my day reading research every day. I know. Yeah, I don't I don't know how you keep up with it. I mean, that I guess that is your field and your passion. And it's just phenomenal what's coming out. It's really good. And can you scare me for a minute? Can you scare me like literally into why I need to be sleeping optimally? Like, I'd love to hear the most dramatic statements you could make so I could pass them on to others about like why sleep is important.

I've heard things like if you don't get good sleep for X amount, what is it? Five days? Wait, one week at five hours? It's like driving a car drunk or something like that. Like can you give me that kind of stuff? Oh, sure. I mean it's – Oh, sure.

I can scare you. Oh, oh it's easy i'll scare you easy yeah no look sleep is is a central function to what we do right and it's not surprising that when you're not getting the sleep that you need that every system in your body is affected right it increases diabetes risk it increases obesity risk it increases accident risk you know every year in the u.s there are over a hundred thousand serious car crashes because people falling asleep behind the wheel and so you if if you take an average of eight hours of sleep and you're only getting six that means within a week you're cognitively as brilliant as somebody that's been awake for 24 hours

i mean let me give you one more example even if you're a good sleeper and you stay awake for long periods of time um for example if you're awake for 24 straight hours even if you're normally a good sleeper that you have the react the equivalent reaction time of somebody that's 0.1 alcohol and that's if your deficit how much sleep you stay awake for 24 hours okay so at 24 hours if you're up a full 24 hours your reaction time is over the legal limit for driving. Absolutely. In fact, in New Jersey, and it's a warning to your listeners here, Michael. If you're in New Jersey and you're awake for 24 hours, it is a criminal offense to be awake 24 hours and drive in New Jersey.

It's punishable up to 10 years in prison. Same as drinking and driving. Wow, wow okay so it doesn't matter like your reaction time is so bad that it's dangerous right and that that is precisely why we have drinking and driving laws is not because they don't like alcohol it's because it affects your reaction time in your decision making and. And not sleeping well and not sleeping long enough has the same reaction. Okay, so, all right, keep going. I know, it's bad, but give me some immunity stuff or give me some other stuff. Immunity. So, yeah, and so these are all choices whether you're an athlete or or not there are

choices you have to make in life and then how do i rule out a sleep disorder and my rule of thumb has been like after three weeks of trying your ass off with great sleep hygiene you know getting the getting the dark right the noise right the consistency right putting having some sort of hygiene where you're gradually putting yourself to sleep or dimming your stimulation throughout the day, that if you've done those for three weeks and you're still screwed up on sleep, then you probably have a sleep disorder. Am I out of bounds on that? You're close. Not totally out of bounds, but your ball's kind of on it. Okay. Yeah. Sharpen me up. Almost out of bounds. Sharpen me is kind of on there. Okay. Yeah.

Sharpen me up. Almost out of bounds. Sharpen me up. I want to get right on that. Sure. Yeah. So this is what excites me about the systems I'm working with at Stanford right now is the diagnosis of sleep disorders, mental disorders, organic diseases, the drugs you're taking, recreational over-the-counter, whatever you're taking, has an effect on your sleep. And so the system that I'm working with is an artificial intelligence computer program that's been around for over 10 years, but used in other spaces that can diagnose sleep disorders, mental disorders, organic diseases within an hour, either over the internet or on the phone.

In every language in the world. Yeah. When you shared this technology, this is phenomenal, Pat. It's stunning. It is shocking. In fact, I call it the Uber of the medical profession. It scares, quite frankly, it scares the hell out of that was when you first shared it that was my response too i was like whoa yeah it's it's it's and it's

highly validated i'm super excited about this this is the program that u.s military is now starting to look at i mean if you think you have a sleep problem and you want to go to a sleep specialist it's going to cost you or your insurance company a couple of thousand dollars for an overnight sleep study. You can get the same level of validation and the same diagnosis on your smartphone for 50 bucks. Phenomenal. And what percentage of globally, let's go globally if you can, what percentage have sleep disorders or problems sleeping, would you say? On the biological side, the sleep disorder side, I mean, there's kind of mixed results, but it's anywhere from sort of 25 to 35, 40% of the global population have some form of biological sleep disorder.

And are you classifying sleep disorder and are you lumping that in with disordered sleeping no no you're just saying just sleep disorder yeah yeah and so here's i mean this is how i kind of define it for athletes is that there are there's a there are biological issues that prevent you from sleeping which is which i includes mental disorder sleep disorders and organic diseases, and the medications you're taking. And then there's the choices that they make in their life, which is where you live and how, you know, when you party, whether you stay up late, or whether you have kids at home. I mean, for the most part, the choices that you make. And then there's the

choices that either you and your employer makes. And so whether you're an athlete, it's the choices that either your employer makes and so whether you're an athlete it's the choices that the league makes and the team makes about when you meet and when you travel and when you play games right and so those are the the the three kind of buckets that i would put people in and when we design fatigue management programs we make sure that you deal with all three of those. Because if you can only deal with one, you're wasting your time. Okay, brilliant. Okay, so get back to me like the ball on the court here on three weeks. How do you sharpen that thought up?

If you really take a run at sleep hygiene and you're still kind of a mess on sleep. How, how long should I wait? How long should I try an organic homeopathic, whatever, whatever, whatever approach to getting my sleep rhythms right? I mean, I, I think, I mean, you have to do a little bit of internal searching, but you know, if after a week you can't get into a proper rhythm, um, then you got an issue. Okay. Okay. All right. So if we met in the middle and said after two weeks, you would an issue. Okay. Okay. All right. So if we met in the middle and said after two weeks you would feel better? I mean, it's up to you and it depends what you do. I mean, it depends how critical your work is

and how critical sleep is to what you're doing. That's a cool thought. Well, all of us want to be vibrant in life. Well, not everybody in life. Everybody I've met, but a lot of people, particularly in the athletic side okay all right so okay how about how about this idea is that after x number of days of proper sleep so if a person that's relatively fatigued they're on average five and a half six

hours of sleep which is like most of the running running and gunners outside of sport that I know. Athletes tend to do pretty good on sleep actually, for the most part, in my experience. Okay. No, no, you're seeing that differently. Okay. Put a pin in that because I want to talk about that. And then, so let's say outside of sport, corporate entrepreneurs and family structure of people that are running families is that five and a half, six and a half, somewhere in that range. And they're tired. They've got a low level hum. They forget what it feels like to be vibrant.

And then how many days of proper sleep or nights of proper sleep do they need to forget fatigue? Greg, I love that question. So there's a couple of ways to approach that. First of all, if you're actually talking about full recovery the the that's what i love about the u.s military technology it actually can predict how long it takes you to recover depending on how long you haven't slept for um and and so for example if you've been up for 24 straight hours it's most people it's five or six nights of eight hours of sleep to

recover okay but here's the great thing about the brain it fools you and so there's some great studies done by hans van don again and others hands now at washington state university but um and and walter reed and so what they've discovered is that when you routinely do not get the eight hours of sleep you need, that your brain, what I call re-norms, and basically your brain tells you, this is now your new normal, so get used to it. Uh-oh, because that's a substandard norm. Right, and that's typically – and that's exactly what happens when they actually put people through sleep deprivation or sleep restriction studies. And they actually – they measure their actual reaction time in a couple of days of poor sleep, they kind of go, you know what? I don't feel that badly anymore. And so I call it renorming. It's going, okay, this is now my new normal.

And so that's what's happened in our society is people are walking around in their new normal, feeling perfectly fine. I think they're feeling perfectly fine. But on objective testing, they don't do very well. Okay, why? Why would our system? Why would our brain do that? I don't know. I've been talking to my brain about that for a long time. It won't answer me. I think it's just a defense mechanism, I think. That's my sense of it. But it is what it is, and that's part of, I think, the whole discovery around sleep and fatigue issues that we're going through right now. Everything we know about sleep and fatigue, particularly around sports or even in industry, we've known in the last decade.

Okay, that's great. Now, let's go back to sport. And the challenges I see with athletes in sleeping is that it's hard to shut it down. And so they're up in weird rhythms. And after a game, they're so stimulated, it's hard for them to get it right, to turn it off. And what I've seen in, well, maybe I'm biased because I value sleep in whatever context I'm going in. So I try to help work with the system to get sleep right. And for instance, trying not to schedule meetings within 10 hours of the last time we saw each other. It was like an environmental rule that we tried to put in place. And I've seen that work wonders. Now, you're saying that the athlete population struggles with sleep more than the general population.

I'm not sure more, but it turns out most of the athletes I've ever met are human beings. And they struggle with a lot of the same issues that that other humans do right um they have some particular depends on the sport but they have some unique issues in terms of you know quick travel um circadian rhythm disruptions um and and you know if the if i've kind of as i said i've kind of put athletes into three buckets the decisions the athletes make decisions that the team make and and biological what's going on biologically with with the players okay uh right and so um i've seen athletes cope very well um with with that because you know they don't have biological issues the team is very good

about how they schedule things i like your 10 hour rule i think that's that's important i've seen teams um that don't get that right and and there's still a lot of ignorance in professional sports around scheduling they just think sleep is something the players can just get over and they can't um and i see a lot of and i've seen athletes who have struggled um uh you know with lifestyle issues you know particularly in major league baseball some of the other teams i work with these guys are you know this they got so much downtime right they're they're abusing themselves i mean there's some there's some studies done that it was a i think it was a five-year study they looked at 80 random major baseball players and they asked them to self report their sleep in terms of their quality sort of good sleep medium sleep poor sleep

and at the end of five years they went back and recontacted the players. And of the players that self-reported poor sleep, only 14% were still playing in the league. Wow, that's a great stat. Right? And it was linear, so that the players that reported themselves as good sleepers, 73% were still playing in the league. Come on. And this is at the major league level? Major league baseball level. Absolutely. And in fact, I've worked in every league in North America and Australia. And I can tell you without naming names that for every team I've worked with, the best

sleepers on the team are the best players without a doubt easy okay what would you think about this strategy is if an athlete was hurt and they need to there's medical benefits yeah more like oh let me just say it this way that a physician recommends or a therapist recommends that they do some sort of treatment on the acute injury every three hours, every two hours to increase the speed of recovery for that joint. And that means that they're going to disrupt their sleep. What would you think about that strategy? I think it's stupid. I mean, to be blunt, I mean, it's, it's, it's based on complete ignorance as far as I'm concerned. And what it says to me is they don't understand the value and the necessity of sleep and that physical recovery – sleep is an important part of physical recovery as well as mental recovery.

And then when you say mental recovery, are you thinking cognitive? Yes. Like as in the focus and like okay and build a better reaction time and ability to concentrate and then what about mentally which is a bit is the software which is the ability to regulate arousal and those sorts of things what do you think about that part of sleep deprivation or restriction um my view is that sleep is such an important function for everything we do that it's not surprising if you start disrupting sleep, you're disrupting all the biological and mental processes within our bodies. Okay, so I looked at some of the research that just came out

on the splitting of the eight hours into two four-hour camps, and I don't like it and i'm wondering where you are on that research um i'm with you i part of the challenge around a lot of reading a lot of sleep research is um it's it's poorly done quite frankly um they don't measure sleep properly they don't measure um properly. They don't take into account mental disorders or organic diseases or drugs that they're taking. sports in around what you're talking about the splitting of things is just poorly designed research and i don't mean to criticize the researchers but a lot of this is new they're trying to get you know they're trying to get their feet on this and try to figure things out and they're not doing a very good job quite frankly is there an assessment that we can take

online or self some sort of self-assessment that you could give us to measure if we're sleep possibly sleep restricted or fatigued in some kind of way there are a couple of questionnaires but basically the questionnaires um ask you whether you're sleeping or you're not you already know the answers to to some of those there's actually a really great one out of Munich that helps you figure out whether you're a morning person or an evening person. And it's actually pretty accurate. And it actually gives you some sleep tips around how to manage your sleep around all of that. Is there a specific link I could go check out? Yeah, I can send you that link. I don't have it in front of me.

But I'll send you that link. But the problem is we tend to think of sleep as one thing. And sleep is multifactorial. And there's so many things that influence our sleep. We tend to focus on one thing whether it's your environment, whether it's how the teams organize the travel or the games. But it has everything to do with holistic human beings. I think researchers are finally starting to get around to understanding how complicated sleep research is. Yeah, and one in particular is back to that hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access, that HPA stuff, is that there's negative impacts on thinking and analyzing and attention and even working memory. And those three or four

systems I just talked about are really horsepower for performance to be able to think clearly, to focus deeply, and to remember the frames that you've seen in the past to adjust to the new. And so I'm agreeing with you that those that sleep well tend to maximize their performance potential better than those that don't. And it's one of the silent thieves of potential for sure. Well, yeah, absolutely. And I've had this discussion with some major league baseball teams as well, which is, you know what, you're losing. They have these massive numbers of players in their system and they could be losing some very good players because they're not talking to them out sleep. They're not dealing with whatever sleep issues

they may have. You know, the philosophy in major league sports and certainly in North America is you're on your own. You know, if you want to perform and get to our level, we'll look after you a little bit. But I think they're losing a lot of players in the system because no one is helping them. Okay. All right. And then when we think about professional sports, imagine that I was connected to a team, a professional team on the West Coast, and we had to travel to the East Coast. And we've tried many different ways to optimize our fatigue by the time so that we're more ready when we play the game. Would you suggest that we try to get on their biological clock,

or would you say stay on our biological clock? Great question. And it's one of these things that depends. Let me give you a couple of examples. In the National Football League, there's a great 40-year study that shows that West Coast teams who go to the East Coast for evening games have a statistically greater win record than the east coast teams but when they go from the west coast to east coast for afternoon games there's no statistical difference and and the way it's been analyzed is to say, look, if you've got an 8 o'clock game, for example, in Tampa Bay or whatever, and you come from the West Coast. And so the time difference is three hours. And so for an 8 o'clock East Coast game, your circadian rhythm is at 5 o'clock, which means your reaction time is actually, your natural reaction time is increasing

till eight o'clock, 7.30, eight o'clock, and then it starts to drop off. Where the East Coast team, they start at eight o'clock and their reaction time is dropping off. And if you do the calculations to the military technology, there's actually a nine to 10% difference in reaction time between the two teams. And over time, that shows up as an advantage to West Coast teams. So that's an example of a situation where you wouldn't want to get to the East Coast too fast if you're a West Coast team. Yeah, okay. What about with a 1 o'clock game on the East Coast?

If we back that out three hours for the West Coast, we're talking about – Right. Certainly in national football, what they showed in that study was that it didn't make any difference in terms of win-loss records. Because the difference in reaction time between 1 and 4 isn't as significant as it is between 5 and 8. You know, I'm not going to question the data. It sounds like if you're citing it, it's thoughtful. I'll respect that. My experience has been, it's a 10 a.m. biological clock for that team. You've got to get to the

arena three hours ahead of time. Now we're arriving at 7 a.m. Sleep loss and circadian are different uh okay but it's not but it's not um let me think about this you're yeah okay good thought because it's not that we've lost sleep but our biological clock is arriving at the stadium at 7 a.m which means our biological clock we woke up at like 4 30 right yeah right and so that and so you know your reaction time at any point in time is is a function of your circadian rhythm and your and your sleep history so it's it's a combination of both and then when is our when are our reaction times highest based on circadian rhythm is it seven no no30 at night. 7.30 at night is the highest. That's

the most vigilant. Yeah. Okay, so what happens at 10 and 1? Why did I get confused there? No, it's lower. I mean, at 10 o'clock in the morning, it's not as high as it is at 1, right? You wake up, it's lower, and then it starts to come up but the difference between 10 and 1 is this isn't as significant as it is between um uh 7 30 and or 8 o'clock and 5 o'clock ah okay so there's a there's like a what's it called a leptokurtic curve or like a hockey stick arc where yeah i mean yeah there's some yeah i can yeah i can show you some grass but that yeah so

so so that's basically it but it also i can show you some grass but that yeah so so so that's basically it but it also I mean if you're dealing with like the NBA and NHL I've dealt with where they play back-to-back games and they play four games in six nights and travel across different time zones then that starts to get really insane okay now that last thing about sleep kind of hygiene and stuff what what what are your thoughts on napping napping is is great napping is sleep um virtually all of the players i've dealt with in national hockey league and the nba all nap in the afternoon um the the challenge with napping is it's much like caffeine right you don't want to take it too close to when you normally go to bed because then you can't get to sleep. Does your body start to

crave a nap if you nap at the same time every day? Yeah, I think so. And the reason you nap is because you're not getting enough sleep during the night. And so does the night. Ah, got it. Okay. And so does the duration of nap, like when you slip into REM sleep, does that impact the quality of sleeping later? Yes and no. I mean, there's a lot of theories around napping.

And part of it is, of course, we sleep in cycles, although it's not as clean as a lot of the people say it is, in terms of the cycles where you go into a deeper sleep and then back out again and then to REM sleep and then back into a deeper sleep and so what happens if you wake up in a deep sleep you're pretty groggy it's called sleep inertia and it takes most people about half an hour to get over that and so you know if you're if you're an athlete and you're sleeping you know for an hour in the afternoon you wake up in a deep sleep who cares if you're not playing until that night right you'll get over it okay got it all right so then okay last thing um i want i would love to celebrate is your new business venture like is it is it, is it still a bit away? Or is this something people

should be paying attention to now? And when, when can I start playing with it a little bit with you? Like, you know, like, where are we in that cycle? Right. So here's where we're at. So, you know, part of my whole journey around the sleep and fatigue is to find technology that's been used in different spaces. So Dr. Maurice Ohayan created this technology more than a decade ago, and it's been used successfully in epidemiological research. He's one of the most respected sleep and fatigue psychiatrists in the world. He has – he's a medical doctor, he's a neurologist, and a psychiatrist, but also has PhDs in biology, mathematics, and computer science. He is the director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center and the chief of the division of public mental health and population sciences brilliant at stanford brilliant brilliant brilliant man and so we connected a couple of

years ago because i became very concerned that there was this gap in in in the technology around sleep for athletes um because we could, you know, with sleep watches, we can kind of tell when you're asleep and when you're awake, but we can't tell anything else about your health. So I connected with him and basically convinced him to turn what's basically an epidemiological tool into a clinical tool. And so he's actually put it online and so it's available um right now um we're looking we're actually it's called a b2b business right now

because we don't have the capacity to help millions of people the most we can do is probably 100 000 a week. We're in the stages right now of dealing with the U.S. military and some of the veterans associations and trying to bring that to their group. Certainly, by the mid-end of 2017, it'll be open generally. It's available now for a team thing. So if you've got a professional sports team and you want to get through the system, we can do it as a team. And we just don't have the staff to deal with 100,000 individual people. We can deal with a small number of clients that can manage their people and organize all of the infrastructure that's needed for this. But the technology is mature. It's highly validated. And it's ready to go.

It's the most brilliant thing that I've ever seen in the whole field of sleep research. What's the name of it? It's called Sleep Eval. So sleep evaluation, but sleep dash eval. They have a website, but the website's a research website. But if you want to figure out there's hundreds literally hundreds and hundreds of research papers um that have used this technology in fact many of the manuals that you talked about the dsm and others were actually the diagnosis um that are listed in the manuals were as a result of the of the research used with this research tool the sleep eval tool okay brilliant okay so can i ask you some questions about you now

sure okay optimistic or pessimistic depends what i'm thinking about but um mostly optimistic yeah street smart or analytical oh god both if you had to pick one which one are you better at oh god analytical I think do you prefer to be in a fast paced or slow paced environment

oh boy slow paced I would think if you could be the first person to go to Mars with a 50% chance of coming back would you go? Yeah. What is your need for control or to be in control?

Pretty low. Are you more intellectually competitive or physically competitive? Intellectually. And then how high on a scale of 1 to 10 would you be on intellectual competitiveness? Probably 8. Internally driven or externally driven? And same thing, put scales to those two.

I'm way more internally driven. I drive myself way more and I'm motivated way more by myself than I am with others. And then what number would you put on that 1 to 10 scale? Eight. Eight. And then why? Why be driven? What is that about for you?

I think it's an internal success drive. I want to succeed. I want to help people. I want to create new things. I want to do new things. What are you most hungry for? What are you really straining and striving? You've made money.

You've made success. You've built a beautiful place for people to be more aware of themselves through technology. What are you really hunting or searching for i don't think that's that's enough for me i want i i think there i want to help people on a much broader scale like i think i think on this new system and technology i'm dealing with i i think we have an opportunity to really upset the entire medical profession in North America and to really make it way more cost effective and to make and give people the opportunity to take control of their own health. Okay.

Are you more critical or positive of yourself? Critical. And do you make fast decisions or slow decisions? Oh, boy. It depends on the context. I do both. Okay. A high trust of others or low trust?

I tend to trust people. More introverted or extroverted? You know, I'm on the fence i can be both um i tend to be in in in a when i'm in small groups i'm more introverted when i'm in bigger groups i'm more extroverted okay pressure comes from pressure comes from myself from wanting to succeed and wanting to create new things i mean we're only on this planet once. For me, I want to leave a positive impact. And I don't mean that in a kind of a frivolous way. I really feel as I get older, the more I'm driven for success.

Okay. And then, okay, let's round this right out here. How do you articulate or think about or define mastery? Yeah, I mean, that's hard for me because it just happens for me. I mean, mastery for me is really a learning process. And I crave to learn.

I crave to learn, particularly from smart people, crave to learn new things. And for mastery, it means for me to be able to learn from some of the smartest people on the planet and to be able to meld together their thoughts and be able to meld together technologies and to create new solutions to old problems. Wow. Okay. And then what do you hope the next generation gets right i hope they get right that they actually care they care about themselves and not get caught up in

social trends so much that to become independent thinkers and be critical of scientific research and quasi-scientific research. And I hope they have the opportunity to learn real basic science and to be able to make critical decisions about what they want to do with their life, but also about, as a society, what kind of decisions do we make and how do we make lives better for everyone? I mean, I see today, you know, so many, it's not like they're sheep. They just don't have the education and experience to be critical of some of this, you know, the scientific research that's going on.

I mean, a great example is, I don't want to sort of beat up people, but looking at things like Fitbit and how many people wear that and run around and look at the data when in fact they're largely random number generators. They have no – there's no scientific validation whatsoever on that technology. They're being sued in federal court in California. But people accept it. They accept it at faith value because they don't have the experience and the education to ask hard questions. That's troubling. It is, but I'm a big fan of education and a big fan of giving people experiences. When you get older, you have that sometimes.

But, yeah, it is troubling. And I think, you know, we're in a kind of society where, you know, people chase the latest bobble, right? It's all about blank. Yeah, it is and then you know yeah what is your favorite technology for sleep monitoring or sleep awareness what do you recommend for people to get better at sleep um you have to be a little bit careful about this because i think use i would if you want to look at a sleep uh watch i would use anything

that's fda approved don't don't yeah you know um but also you need to understand how complex sleep is and all the various factors that go into it that's why i said i'm a huge fan of this whole sleep eval program which gives you the opportunity to look at holistically what's causing your sleep issues. And then you can make decisions about what you want to do with it. Pat, I love it. I mean, you're thoughtful, clear thinking, how do we get a hold or how to not a hold? How do people follow what you're doing or what's the best way for them to be aware of your businesses and research and thoughts? You know, probably on my LinkedIn account, a little bit on Twitter. I'm in the final stages of editing a book on sleep and performance for athletes that I've co-written with my daughter.

Oh, cool. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so we're going to put up a website in the next couple of months and market it as well. But we cover a lot of the topics that you've talked about it. And, yeah, and she's a big sleep person as well she just actually uh is graduating in may from uh tulane university law school in sports law

well done okay so what does your twitter handle it is at sleep at sleep sports at sleep sports okay brilliant brilliant all right so listen thank you for your time. Thank you for spending your valuable resource here with us. And then, you know, seriously, Pat, I love what you're doing and I love how you do it. And so I'm wishing you the best success. Appreciate that, Michael. It over to iTunes if you haven't subscribed and look up Finding Mastery. We're also going to have Pat's brilliant insights embedded into a second podcast called Minutes on Mastery. And if you can share a comment or review, we love the support. It helps to gain the momentum we're looking for. Thank you for checking in with our sponsors. You can find me at Michael Gervais on Twitter.

And you can find us on Instagram at Finding Mastery. Okay. All the best. Pat, appreciate it. My pleasure. Have a great day. Okay. Thanks.

All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. This show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors.

And we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode

with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.