National Geographic

AUGUST | 3 QUESTIONS FROM THE EDITORARIANNAHUFFINGTON``````Arianna Huffington, 68, co-founded the news and blog website theHuffington Post, and is CEO and founder of the wellness company ThriveGlobal. She has authored 15 books, including The Sleep Revolution:Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.``````‘WHEN I GET EIGHTHOURS, I KNOW THEDIFFERENCE. I KNOWI’M MORE EFFECTIVE;I KNOW I’M THE BESTVERSION OF MYSELF.’INTERVIEW BY SUSAN GOLDBERGShort on SleepThanks for sharing your expertiseon sleep, the topic of our coverstory. Thomas Edison called sleep“an absurdity” and “a bad habit.”Is that idea ingrained in our culture?I think it’s deeply ingrained, butwe’re at a moment of transformation.What stops people from prioritiz-ing sleep is the fear that somehowthey’re going to miss out. We haveso many phrases that confirm that—“You snooze, you lose,” “I’ll sleepwhen I’m dead.” But now there arerole models, people who are priori-tizing sleep and are superefective.``````You’re known as hard-charging. Didyou have a moment when you said,I’ve got to change what I’m doing?Yes, in 2007 when I collapsed fromsleep deprivation, exhaustion, andburnout. Being a divorced mother oftwo teenage daughters, I had boughtinto the delusion that this was the priceof success and of managing all aspectsof my life. It was after I collapsed that Istarted studying this epidemic of burn-out. There had been a lot written aboutthe importance of nutrition and exer-cise, but sleep was still underrated anddismissed. And so I wrote the book.``````Will getting enough sleep ever beprioritized in our culture?Its importance is becoming more rec-ognized. Of course there are holdouts,people who still brag about how littlesleep they get, but they’re increasinglylike dinosaurs. One of the metaphorsI use is that sleep is like the laundry.You’re not going to take out the laundry10 minutes early to save time. You haveto complete all the cycles in the washingmachine. Our sleep cycles have to becompleted too; otherwise we wake upand we feel like wet and dirty laundry.``````PETER YANGTHIS INTERVIEW WAS EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY.