Cheri Mah: Thirty extra sleep minutes change NBA careers

Mah argues that if you don’t sleep your best, you cannot be your best. Her work with elite athletes shows sleep extension of ~1.5 hours per night led to a 9% improvement in free throws and three-point shots, 12% faster reaction time, and 4% faster sprints. Executives and knowledge workers gain similar advantages in judgment, decision-making, mood and productivity. Reframing sleep as the beginning of tomorrow rather than the end of today helps people prioritize it.

You don’t need a dramatic overhaul to see benefits. Mah cites research in high schoolers showing just 15 extra minutes of sleep per night correlated with going from a B to an A, and 11 minutes from a C to a B. She recommends adding 15–30 minutes per night for a week, then another 15–30 minutes the next week, to incrementally move from, for example, 6 to 6.5 to 7 hours and beyond.

Make your bedroom ‘cave‑like’: dark (blackout curtains/eye mask), quiet (earplugs or white noise), cool (ideally about 16–20°C / 60–67°F), and comfortable. Shift hot showers/baths to 1–2 hours before bed so your core temperature can fall naturally at sleep onset, which may shorten time to fall asleep and enhance deep sleep. Remove bright screens and work from the bed; reserve it strictly for sleep and sex to reinforce the brain’s association with sleep.

Avoid large, heavy, fried, fatty, tomato-based or highly sugary meals and alcohol close to bedtime—they fragment sleep, raise heart rate, and worsen sleep quality. If hungry late at night, have a ‘pre‑sleep snack’ combining complex carbs and lean protein (e.g., whole-grain cereal and milk, yogurt with nuts and berries, cottage cheese and fruit, whole‑wheat crackers with peanut butter) to prevent mid‑night hunger without derailing sleep. Alcohol may help you fall asleep but markedly disrupts sleep architecture.

Short daytime naps (20–30 minutes) confined to light sleep can boost alertness and performance without causing heavy grogginess or impairing night sleep. Longer naps that enter deep sleep often leave you sluggish (sleep inertia) and can delay nighttime sleep. The ‘nappuccino’—drinking caffeine, then immediately taking a 20–30 minute nap—combines the wakefulness effect of caffeine (which kicks in after ~15 minutes) with nap benefits and is more effective than either alone for a few hours of enhanced alertness.