Traveling with Clinton is like chasing after a woman shot out of a cannon with rocket boosters strapped to her pantsuit: The world rushes past in a blur and you’re catapulted into an alternate reality, one in which days are relentlessly scheduled and life seems an endless progression from one meeting, interview, press conference, or statement to another, with flights covering thousands of miles in between. “Punishing,” “grueling,” “exhausting,” and, to a lesser degree, “fun” are the words most commonly used by her staff to describe the experience of traveling with her. Those close to her say that she benefits from the ability to sleep on command—and to draw on reserves of energy lacking in most mortals. “She’s nonstop on the road, and she wears out the staff and the traveling press,” says Andrew Shapiro, who worked for Clinton in the Senate and is now assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. “She’s just incredibly high-energy.”
Sometimes I feel like I am working all the time, and it’s mostly true, because I wake up most mornings at 5 a.m. to start working on projects, get to the office at 8 a.m. to work on the site, and then am back at home by 8 p.m. to eat dinner and crawl in bed to do some more work before falling asleep with my laptop on my chest. But I am in no way on the same level as our secretary of state. Seriously, can Hillary Clinton teach me how to sleep on command? Because that would be an incredibly amazing skill to have. I have a friend who says he can only get three or four hours of sleep each night, and I’m always like, “HOW?” and also, “Can you teach me?” Because I’d love a couple of more hours of awake time in my day, and my body tells me I need at least eight to not hate the world in the morning.
My old boss (an artist/curator/publisher) needed just 3-4 hours of sleep too, and he got so. much. done. It was ridiculous. And somehow between all the working he did he still had time to like, cook everybody veggie hot dogs and drink Campari cocktails while reminiscing about Allen Ginsberg. Possibly he owned a Time-Turner.
Mike Dang, you work way too hard.
I am in total awe of people who can function without sleep; I consider even 7 hours extreme deprevation.
I would love to know if the highly successful non-sleepers were always that way, of if its something one s-l-o-w-l-y becomes.
@Mari D I have a feeling they’re born that way, which is sad. But there’s always polyphasic sleep, as attempted by Kramer on that one episode of Seinfeld! (His experiment does not end well.)
@sockhopbop I think you are born needing certain hours, but people like doctors can train themselves to need less. I am really a terrible person when sleep deprived, so sleeping well is my gift to my fellow human beings
@Mari D I know! If I get anything less than 8 I am so sleepy, all the time. Also if the sun isn’t out, my energy is just shot.
I am an 8-hour person who can function with 7 and sometimes 6. My old boss was also amazing and never tired and it made me feel bad. My boyfriend is 33 to my 24 and it kinda drives me crazy how he needs to wake up early even on weekends, it makes me feel lazy! he says it’s an age thing but I just feel like I am a person with extremely low energy who needs to sleep a lot and dreams of being a cat.
If I don’t set an alarm, I will sleep for 10-11 hours, every night. I did it for 3-4 moths while unemployed, and realised that the number of hours I needed never decreased, i.e. I AM SCREWED and will never ever be in that situation where I have enough sleep while also holding down a full time job. I I can function with 5-6 hours, but after several 6 hour nights I am at the point where I can barely put together a coherent sentence.
It seems like requiring less sleep is a genetic gift that nobody really talks about.
OMG so HIlary Clinton sounds like Leslie Knope more and more every day, and I LOVE IT.