In today's day and age, more and more people are opting out of jobs and are creating start-ups with ideas of their own. And while this may seem really cool, most of these entrepreneurs can have a really hard time maintaining a work-life balance. A recent study found that entrepreneurs who can't find the time to get enough sleep can replenish their energy by meditating for some time every day. “As little as 70 minutes a week, or 10 minutes a day, of mindfulness practice may have the same benefits as an extra 44 minutes of sleep a night,” said Charles Murnieks, lead author of the study.
The researchers said that often when people are exhausted due to lack of sleep, they're a lot less likely to be interested in achieving their goals and completing tasks at work. They conducted a study on 105 entrepreneurs from the US and asked them questions like how long they slept, how much they practised mindfulness and how they would rate their exhaustion levels. It was found that participants who slept for long hours or who practised mindfulness were a lot less likely to feel exhausted.
However, they also found that if a person was feeling exhausted despite sleeping for long hours, meditation wouldn't do much to help them either. “If you’re feeling stressed and not sleeping, you can compensate with mindfulness exercises to a point. But when you’re not low on sleep, mindfulness doesn’t improve those feelings of exhaustion,” Murnieks said. Well, despite this, it goes to prove that just a little while of mediation every day can prove to be rather beneficial for the mind and body.
