We close our eyes, fall unconscious for a few hours, wake up and then do it all over again the next day. Think about it, by the time we die, we would have spent almost a third of our lives asleep, A THIRD.

Just imagine all the things you could have done with that time. The books you could have read, the skills you could have learnt, the businesses you could have built and everything else you daydream about. So I just cannot help but wonder if all that is holding us back is sleep.

Don’t believe me?

Just look at all the successful people around us. Elon Musk reportedly sleeps around four hours. Donald Trump has claimed to sleep even less. The prime minister of Japan has said in an interview that she gets like zero to three hours of sleep a day. Then there are the lists. This CEO doesn’t sleep. That billionaire barely sleeps. So, naturally, a connection between sleeping less and being successful comes to mind.

Well, before we get to that connection, let’s talk about us.

We Bangladeshis have somehow managed to ruin both our sleep cycle and our productivity at the same time. If it isn’t something as dramatic as a revolution, most of us are not getting out of bed to do something productive with our lives. We’ll happily scroll TikTok, Facebook or Instagram until two in the morning, then sleep until noon because, well, there’s nothing forcing us to wake up. On weekdays, we snooze the alarm like five times before finally getting up at the very last minute because of work or class. On Fridays, many of us would probably sleep until it is time to throw on a panjabi and head for Jumu’ah prayers. We are not sleeping because we worked so hard that our body needs the rest. We are sleeping because we stayed awake doing absolutely nothing. And this has been the cycle of us Bangladeshis since the jomidaar amol.

This is probably why we have never heard of a Bangladeshi on those lists of successful people who allegedly survive on four hours of sleep.

So, what is the connection?

Science says that when you don’t sleep enough, your brain temporarily releases more chemicals involved in alertness and motivation, like dopamine. For a while, you actually feel amazing. You feel energetic. You feel focused. You sit down to work and suddenly six hours go by without you noticing, and you are convinced that you’ve cracked the code to productivity.

Except you haven’t.

What you are experiencing is often an illusion. Your brain is essentially running on emergency mode. You think you’re performing at your best, but your judgement, memory and attention have already taken a hit. It feels like you are getting more done simply because your body is forcing itself to stay alert. Then comes the crash. You spend the next day, sometimes the next two, feeling completely drained. You sleep for twelve hours and still wake up tired. You cannot focus, you cannot think straight and you find it extremely annihilating to repeat the same level of productivity.

Does that mean you should sleep as much as possible instead?

Not really.

Sleeping ten or twelve hours every day is not helping either. Those extra hours are still hours you could have spent doing something meaningful. The goal is not to sleep less and it is definitely not to sleep more. The goal is to sleep enough that you wake up refreshed and then actually do something with the hours you are awake.

Because here’s the truth.

Success and productivity have never been about who sleeps the least. It is about who wastes the least amount of time while they are awake. And if your day consists of doom-scrolling until 2 a.m. only to wake up at noon feeling tired, then sleep isn’t what’s holding you back.

You are.