Wake up and realise the importance of sleep

Not, by any stretch of the imagination, am I living a rock and roll lifestyle, but really there are too many things to get done in a day to be sleeping.

At university I was quite partial to leaving everything to the last minute and pulling all nighters – although I never succumbed to No Doz which was the drug of choice in our rather conservative 1980s circle – staying up til dawn writing long essays about the sociological importance of the colour of infielders in the American baseball leagues.

And then I started working shift work as a journalist, loving the night shift, getting home post midnight, watching bad television, reading … finally getting tired about 3am, putting in about five hours of sleep before getting up to make the most of the day before you had to do it all again.

And then the children came along, both bad sleepers as babies, but I could handle the disrupted nights, the 4am feeds, the crying at all hours. Indeed, before I returned to work, all it would take is a power hour at about 8.30am, once their father had gone off to the office, with them snuggled in bed beside me, all crashed out in our milky haze.

And now as a mother of teenagers, who have both settled into regular sleep habits, I still find myself up late, dragging myself out of bed early, just to get things done. I am also adamant that I'll have a few hours to myself every night. To watch something awful on television, to sit with a cup of tea, to just sit, and be thankful that we got through another day. If I'm lucky, I'll get about six hours a night. I'm coping, right?

Well it seems not. A copy of Arianna Huffington's book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming your life one night at a time, lobbed on my desk this week. And I just wanted to rest my head on it and go to sleep. If The Canberra Times was a more kind and caring employer, I would have been able to slip off to the nap room.

The book has already become something of a phenomenon. As the co-founder, president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post media group, we're all thriving after following her philosophy she shared in Thrive, her best-selling book about redefining what is important in our lives.

Both books had their origin in an incident where Huffington collapsed in her office, breaking her cheekbone and cutting open her face, brought on by exhaustion and a lack of sleep.

Sleep, or lack of it, more precisely, costs society big time. Huffington estimates sleep deprivation costs the US economy $63 billion each year, she points out the number of road deaths which have been attributed to drowsy drivers, the amount of prescriptions written for sleeping tablets. The statistics here would align you can be sure.

She suggests we need a sleep revolution. That we need to wake up and realise the importance of sleep. (Actually, I thought of that catchy line myself, you can use it if you like, Arianna).

If we're honest, the idea of getting enough sleep and the benefits that such a move will bring, is nothing new. Yet, like many things my nanna would have just called common sense, we seem to have poo-pooed the idea in the search for the so-called perfect life.

These days, we crave busyness and purpose and achievement and advancement just to prove we are something, am something. People brag about how little sleep they have and we praise them. Donald Trump credits his success to sleeping only three to four hours a night. Martha Stewart gets less than four hours, but on damn fine sheets you can be sure. Barack Obama gets by on six, Margaret Thatcher got by on four, our own former prime minister Kevin Rudd apparently beat them all with just three hours of shut-eye a night.

But, according to Huffington, (the book is terribly well-researched), they've all got it wrong. According to the experts from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society adults need a minimum of seven hours a night. (Teenagers need a minimum of eight – and she advocates high school starting later in the day to allow for the natural sleeping patterns of teenagers to work in better with the school day.)

When you think of it, 11 until 6 could be quite manageable. For me, however, and many women I know feel the same way, it's getting to sleep which is the problem. Too many things to think about, too much going through our heads. When you're like this it's irritating to watch a sleep mate doze off once their head hits the pillow.

And speaking of sleep mates … there's a great chapter on sleeping together. I remember my mother, another woman full of commonsense advice, once said to me make sure you marry someone you enjoy sleeping with. I thought she was being rather risque, but no, she meant sleeping with. My father was a terrible snorer who tossed and turned. She knew what she was talking about.

And all this is fairly timely. School holidays are upon us and at one point in the last week I said to myself, can I just sleep for a week to catch up. I'll endeavour to put some of Huffington's practical advice to the test, endeavour to sleep well, transform my life one night at a time, as she suggests.

Now someone please come over and tuck me in.