Gone are the time when founders and CEOs boasted of surviving with three hours of sleep and a daily dose of Adderall. The CEO and founder Peter Barsoom acknowledges that he was “one of those guys”. For two decades in the financial market, Barsoom slept after midnight, woke up at 4:30 am, and took a bike ride or swim before he proudly sit at his table at 7:30 am.
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“Sleeping was something you did when you retired,” says Morgan Stanley’s former employee who now drives a cannabis company to Fortune magazine. “My vision changed completely, 180 degrees.” Today, he sleeps between six and eight hours a night packed with lulm stories from the Calm app.

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And Barsoom is not alone. The global sleep economy is already worth more than $ 500 billion, with consumers investing in everything, from smart rings and blackout masks to $ 20,000 mattresses. As sleep technology, biohacking and the sleepmaxxing They become popular, rest is becoming both a priority of well-being and a modern status symbol inside and outside the high executive positions.
Sleep as a success strategy
Daniel Ramsey, CEO of MyoutDesk, which offers virtual team solutions for companies, recalls that it was also attracted by “hustle porn” who dominated the mindset of Wall Street wonders, which preached that the only way to reach the top was to sleep when he was dead.
Twitter co -founder Jack Dorsey supposedly slept only four hours a night while Elon Musk said sleeping in the office. “People now know that this is not the way to succeed in the long run,” Ramsey tells Fortune.
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Although the workload has not diminished, Ramsey, 47, now monitors his sleep every night and prioritizes the brain shut down.
“I want to lead people. I don’t want to have to micro-generate them. I want to hear when there is a problem and not judge,” says Ramsey. “I found that when you focus on sleep, longevity and health, these things get easier.”
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Arianna Huffington, CEO of Thrive, a behavioral change technology company, describes her night routine as “a sacred ritual.” She leaves her cell phone out of the room, takes chamomile tea or lavender occasionally and reads a book.
Tom Pickett, CEO of Headspace, a mental health platform, says that monitoring your sleep offers “a window to understand how I am preparing for the next day and what I need to adjust to be better prepared for the following days.”
“I treat sleep preparation as a training or important meeting, because when sleep fails, everything else also fails,” he says.
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Even the Amazon tycoon, Jeff Bezos, endorses the power of a good night’s sleep. “I sleep 8 hours, I prioritize that. I think better. I have more energy,” said Bezos on a public stage. “As a senior executive, you are paid to make a small number of high quality decisions.”
Wendy Troxel, PHD, Rand Corporation Sleep Scientist and author of “Sharing the Covers,” Fortune tells a major change in the attitude of the executives about rest since the 2000s.
“In the first ten years of my career, it was all about convincing people of the importance of sleep. Sleep was considered lost time,” says Troxel. “Now we reverse this idea. If you want to be a high performance, you need to make sleep a central part of your performance routine.”
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Unfortunately, she says sleep is “often the thing with which high performance people have more difficulty.” And this is one of the reasons why the sleep economy is thriving.
Sleep Economy moves $ 500 billion
Using an intelligent ring heard during a lunch may be as desirable for business elites as a luxury watch. More than 2.5 million people bought the Oura, which costs from $ 300 and includes a monthly subscription.
“There is a lot of information available that can really help optimize and find out how to be the best version of yourself,” says Ramsey. “I found that the better I slept, the better I was as leader, entrepreneur and father.”
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Sleep economy is valued at more than $ 500 billion, and many research groups estimate that the sleeping assistant market alone should exceed 150 billion by 2034. The Global Wellness Institute has documented sleep tourism growth, sleep monitoring and artificial intelligence tools as a growing trend in well-being.
Huffington, who began to prioritize sleep after exhaustion physical collapse at the beginning of his career, wears the Oura ring and travels with the Therabody sleep mask and black tape to block flashing lights in hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Kayla Barnes Welfare CEO spent over $ 11,000 on an organic mattress, more than 2,000 in a Faraday cage to block electromagnetic fields, and more than 10,000 in Blackout curtains.
Ramsey says the sleep economy has led him to an intense search for the best equipment and sleeping tricks. He, who is in bed at 9:30 pm, spent tens of thousands of dollars on sleep items, including a $ 20,000 Sleep Number bed.
But it is not just the successful forties that are prioritizing sleep and boosting the expansion of the sector. Although sleep wisdom comes with age, generation Z is not sleeping either when it is exhausted.
“Sleepfluencers”Or“sleep maxxers”They emerged among young people of generation Z, eager to optimize a good night’s sleep, promoting tricks ranging from mocktails To sleep even sleep playlists. Search “sleepmaxxing” At Tiktok and you will find thousands of product evaluations and routines for sleeping.
Amrita Bhasin, 24, CEO of Sotira, AI distributor for retail brands, is starting to invest in sleep and spends about $ 150 a month on new sleeping products, including Blackout curtains and eye masks.
Rejecting “the age of the Silicon Valley series, with a lot of guys sleeping in the firm in inflatable mattresses,” Bhasin says he’s “really trying to take things to the next level” when it comes to prioritizing sleep.
“Hackathons are very difficult for my body now,” Bhasin tells Fortune, referring to programming culture all night long. “It’s not healthy for a long -term strategy if you’re trying to build a company.”
Sleep Optimization: Science -based expert tips
Sleep improves brain health and performance, and is correlated with the ability to regulate emotions and decrease the risk of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Sleep is also linked to mental clarity and the reduction of chronic conditions such as heart disease.
“Sleep is directly linked to good judgment and decision -making skills, which is absolutely critical, whether you are an elite athlete or a CEO in a meeting room,” says Troxel. “Athletes recognize that recovery is often the performance differential.”
But, as in everything, there is a limit for overuse of sleep technology. There is even a term – Ortosonia – for stress caused by sleep monitoring, which can ironically damage sleep, explains Troxel.
Notably, although the sleep trackers and gadgets They can help people prioritize bedtime and make healthier life choices based on data, they are not suitable for everyone, says Troxel. The most proven ways and at no cost to prioritize sleep are: sleep at least seven hours, sleep in fresh and dark environments, practice a soothing routine before bed and maintain consistent schedules to sleep and wake up.
How to sleep better without spending thousands of dollars:
- Establish a routine to slow down before bed, which may include reading, writing a diary, taking a hot shower or meditating
- Limit the screen time before bed to avoid the scroll nightly
- Avoid heavy meals at two hours before bed, as they can impair sleep quality
- Keep regular times to sleep and wake up to align with the body’s circada rhythm
Perhaps there is a Happy Half, where founders do not sleep at the tables, but also are not obsessed with a sleep score below ideal that, ironically, leaves them worried at night.
As for Barsoom, he says his apparently indestructible 22 -year -old self mocked if he knew that one day he would take care of his sleep habits to the point of even telling a carefully selected lullain story.
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