Somebody handed Daniel an article arguing that buying a CPAP machine might be the highest-ROI business move a leader can make. He mostly agrees, and he is not buying a used one. That's the tension in this episode: we all know sleep is the input that makes knowledge work good, and almost every company still measures commitment in hours logged and emails answered at 11pm.

Ryan and Daniel get into what actually happens to a leader running on empty, why the six-hour crowd is in more danger than the four-hour crowd, and why the to-do list is never the reason to skip sleep.

In this episode:

• Ryan breaks down the 40-hour week nobody wants to admit to: 10 hours where you're worth triple your pay, 20 going through the motions, 10 you should probably be fired for
• Why four hours of sleep is less dangerous than five and a half, and what "just enough to maintain momentum" costs you
• The generational fight: is hustle a millennial thing, a boomer thing, or just a thing people in their 20s do to themselves
• What happens to boundaries when your coworker is also your spouse, and why the evening conversation never stops being a business conversation
• The hiring thought experiment: four hours of sleep, or permanently two glasses of wine in
• Why an exhausted leader creates rework, conflict, and sloppy decisions that cost more than the hours saved
• The one category of work where you actually can push through on less sleep

00:00 — Is a CPAP the Highest-ROI Business Move You Can Make?

02:00 — Health vs. Hustle: Companies Still Count Hours, Not Energy

07:00 — The 40-Hour Week Where Only 10 Hours Actually Matter

14:00 — Four Hours of Sleep or Two Glasses of Wine? Pick Your Hire

24:00 — Ryan's Confession: Seven Hours and a Schedule That Swings

31:00 — A Rested Four Hours Beats an Exhausted Twelve

36:00 — Sleep Beats Hours Unless You're Digging Ditches

DANIEL: Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. Ryan, I'd like to talk with you a little bit about health versus hustle. We're seeing a lot of studies come out recently showing that executives, white collar workers, knowledge workers need a lot more sleep and self-care to be productive. But I don't know how many companies have caught up to that yet. We're still seeing a hustle culture where people want to see hours, and responding to text messages and emails at all hours of the night. So how do we balance the health versus the hustle? I heard about an article recently talking about CPAP machines for sleep apnea, and why getting a CPAP machine might be the highest-ROI business move you can make. Thoughts? Do you even know what a CPAP machine is? You might be too young.

RYAN: I struggle with the statement, especially when it says get a used one. I don't know anybody that wants to get a used CPAP machine to get their sleep back in order.

DANIEL: Let's start with the bigger picture though — health versus hustle. I do think there's a level of just hustle harder, especially in the younger generation. I think this falls into the topic as well: you've got the 20-year-olds that'll just hustle their way into a health problem.

RYAN: I don't think that's a generation thing. I think that's an age thing. Boomers and Gen Xers and Gen Y, we all did this when we were in our 20s. We didn't take enough vacation days. We pulled all-nighters. You can do that when you're in your 20s, but it catches up with you eventually.

DANIEL: I do think there's a difference in America now, in that the younger generation is less so than the previous generation. I think the biggest hustler generation was definitely the boomers. Boomers were generally grinders. Not to say that the millennials are less grinders, or the Xers are less grinders. I think the Gen Zs are better about taking PTO than anybody else, but that's a whole different topic.

Going back to the CPAP machine — I think it comes down to good sleep. Are you getting good sleep? Because if you get good sleep, then you have more energy, more focus, et cetera. I guess the question is, in the context of the family business side: how much are parents expecting their kids to hustle, and it's actually destroying their health and their business?

RYAN: In many organizations, there's this unspoken expectation that hours equal commitment. I think hours is not really the right metric, because I noticed this even when I was working for corporate. In a 40-hour week — let's just say I worked 40, which generally I'd probably work more — there were probably five to ten of those hours where I was just amazing. I was worth two to three times what they paid me. Then there were probably about 20 hours where I was doing my job, but I wasn't setting any records. And then there were probably about five to ten hours a week where I was completely worthless.

I think that's probably true of most employees. Over a 40-hour week, there are probably ten hours where you're doing a lot of great things that are adding a lot of value, twenty hours where you're going through the motions, and ten hours where you should probably be fired, because you're just standing around drinking coffee, chatting with your coworkers, not doing anything productive. That's what a lot of jobs are.

If you think that every one of those 40 hours is created equal, you're not really thinking about it correctly. You added most of your value that week in those ten hours. Now, you still have to be there for 40. But one of the things I'm finding is that I don't necessarily need all 40 hours to add that much value. I think it's because of energy, focus, clarity. If you have those things, you can add 40 hours' worth of value in a lot less time. But then you're going to need more time to recover.

DANIEL: Yeah, I think there's definitely been a big health wave, and everybody knows sleep — we suck at it. Between the Whoop and the Oura Ring, and now Apple has sleep functions built in, and I'm sure there's a dozen other devices on the market that can do it as well. We know sleep is important, and we've got trackers that yell at us, and yet we still fall back to habits of hustle. As a founder — and I'm pretty sure you're not good at this — why do you not sleep as much as you should?

RYAN: Well, I have a great excuse. And by excuse, I mean a horrible one. Too committed. Too involved in too many things. And I think it's also time of life. When my kids were much younger and they went to bed at eight o'clock at night, or 7:30, I had more time to work on things. Versus now, my kids are going to bed at 11 o'clock. So nine, ten o'clock, there are interactions. Switching between multiple functions — writing code, running a company, consulting on this, doing podcasts, yada yada yada.

I would say in the earlier days it was a lack of prioritization and time management. Now it's different: not getting seven hours of sleep is bad for me.

DANIEL: So how so?

RYAN: Well, seven hours is good.

DANIEL: I was going to say — is it because you need nine and you're only getting seven? Why is it?

DANIEL: On an inconsistent schedule.

RYAN: Yeah. Which screws with the pattern. So at least I'm in a better state. I'm focused on getting seven.

DANIEL: I think one of the challenges for a lot of professionals who work with family members is that the line between work and home gets really blurry. And it's tough to get away from work and recover when your coworkers are always around you, because they're your family.

RYAN: You live in the same house.

DANIEL: Right. You live in the same house as your coworkers. So having some level of boundaries that can help you say, "Hey, this is not work time" — or hobbies, or something that gets you out of the house. Anything that can help you recover is going to make you a better employee, and going to make work not suck, because you're able to recover.

And I think most people don't know what they do to recover, or what they should do to recover. So we just kind of keep grinding and keep grinding. And then we see all the mental health issues that are just so pervasive right now. So I think it's very important to be able to take a break from work. And it is doubly important if work and home have the same people there.

RYAN: Agree. I think that's definitely more for a husband and a wife. I think that's less so for a parent and a child — not saying there's no exception to the rule where they live together. But usually, by the time you're — I mean, a teenager working for their parent is a very different situation than "this is your full-time career, you're out of college," et cetera. And yeah, you may live with them for that small period in your early 20s where you're getting things going, but probably not for long. So I think that's more for a husband-and-wife duo.

And I do think in that case, that one is: can you shut it off? When you don't live with your coworkers, you can shut it off when you go home. Unless you're a workaholic — then you just keep it going, but that's a different problem. Versus when it's your spouse, when your evening conversation is just continuing the business discussion. When do you shut your brain off?

DANIEL: Yeah. Would you rather hire an employee who only gets four hours of sleep a night, or an employee who's always two glasses of wine in?

RYAN: Ooh.

DANIEL: Because the studies show that four hours of sleep makes you function like you're a couple of drinks in.

RYAN: I think I'd rather have — I mean, it depends on when they're having the wine. If they're having their wine at midnight, or they're having their wine at—

DANIEL: No, no, no. I mean around the clock. They've always got two glasses of wine in them. So they're functioning in a perma-buzz. That is what the research shows. That's what you're like if you're working on four hours of sleep.

RYAN: I believe it.

DANIEL: Yeah, you're as functional as somebody who's permanently buzzed.

RYAN: Well, and I agree. But I think the big one is that at some point your body is going to crash.

DANIEL: Oh, yeah.

RYAN: So four hours of sleep is not the problem. It's the people that are getting five and a half, barely six. They're just barely short-changing their body enough to maintain momentum. Versus if you're going on four hours of sleep — unless you've got that weird genetic gene where you actually can do that.

DANIEL: I worked for a guy once like that. It was crazy.

RYAN: Yeah.

DANIEL: For us, at four hours over the course of a week, you're going to be crashing. But I think what's even more dangerous is that there are those people who will run the whole week like that and sleep through the weekend — or catch up on their sleep on the weekend — and then they grind through the week. And does that actually work?

RYAN: No, I don't think it does. You get productivity out of Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday you're burned out again, and then you're pushing yourself through, and you're still in the negatives. Negative sleep.

DANIEL: So it's a perceived—

RYAN: Yeah. Perceived time.

DANIEL: And you're destroying your health.

RYAN: And I think you're destroying a lot of the things around you.

DANIEL: Right. A leader who's operating on that much sleep is not attuned to what's going on around them. They are not a good version of themselves. They're going to have more conflict. They're going to have more miscommunications. They're going to have sloppy decisions, and it's going to create rework. You should just go home and go to bed. I would rather have a rested executive give me four really good hours than an exhausted executive give me 12 crap hours.

RYAN: Oh, it's been proven. Your cognitive ability to think strategically just goes. You're doing anything but executing. Your error rate is through the roof. And you're not doing anybody any good. That's why one of the best things you can do is good sleep.

DANIEL: Yeah. Just shut it off. It'll be there tomorrow. Get good sleep, wake up, and you will be more productive.

RYAN: It's the red line versus the green line. It's the perceived value: "If I power through this, then I can get done." Well, there's always going to be something on the to-do list tomorrow. The to-do list is always going to grow. And all you're going to do is have an actual value that's low. Versus take the time, disconnect, discharge, get the rest. You'll come back fresher, smarter, more efficient, and you'll get through the to-do list — probably by the same time you would have, killing yourself.

DANIEL: Yeah. The exception is if you work on an assembly line and just kind of stand there and watch pill bottles go by—

RYAN: You're digging ditches.

DANIEL: You're doing something that requires very little cognitive effort. You can push yourself harder. But if your job requires you to make decisions, to interact with people with empathy — if it requires you to make strategic decisions, if it requires you to be creative in any sense, whether that's technically creative or visually creative — anything that requires empathy, creativity, strategic thinking, or interacting with others, sleep is more important than hours.

The only exception is pure manual labor. And look, there's a lot of people that do that. I actually enjoy that every once in a while. You can do that on less sleep. But if you need to be creative, strategic, influential, or interacting with people, prioritize sleep more.

Make work not suck.

Make Work Not Suck — our podcast talks about exactly that: our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode, and make work not suck.