It turns out, 8 hours of sleep isn’t always 8 hours of rest. Just like 40 hours of work isn’t always 40 hours of progress.
For most of my adult life, I thought I understood sleep. Get enough of it – 7 or 8 hours – and you’ll be fine. That’s what we’re told, right? But a few years ago, I started wearing a Garmin smartwatch. Mostly for fitness, but I stumbled on something else: sleep scores.
Suddenly, I had number – not just hours, a breakdown of how much REM sleep I was getting, how long I spent in deep sleep, how often I was waking up without realizing it. And here’s what hit me: I was logging 8 hours most nights, but often waking up groggy, unfocused, irritated. I wasn’t rested. I was just unconscious for a while.
That changed everything.
I started correlating my behavior with my sleep scores. Had caffeine too late? Didn’t wind down before bed? Scrolled instead of read? Red wine with dinner? It all showed up in the numbers. My Garmin gave me a way to articulate what my body already knew but couldn’t quite explain.
It gave me insight into something I had always treated as binary: enough sleep = good. But that wasn’t the truth. The quality mattered more than the quantity.
And that’s when it clicked for me:
Growing a business is a lot like managing your sleep.
Growth ≠ Health
Just because your company is active – shipping, pitching, marketing – doesn’t mean it’s thriving. You can be doing all the “right” things, logging long hours, running campaigns, meeting deadlines, and still not feel momentum. Or worse, you’re growing, but at the cost of your team’s well-being or your own peace of mind.
We often measure the input: hours worked, meetings booked, users acquired. But without a clear understanding of quality – of how that work is landing, how people are feeling, whether the foundation is solid – we can’t know whether the growth is real or just noise.
Business Needs a “Sleep Score”
What would it look like to measure the quality of your business growth – not just the size?
At Chief of Chaos, we ask questions like:
- Are we making decisions that reduce friction or just speeding through pain?
- Is our pace sustainable for our team?
- Are our wins rooted in values, or are they short-term dopamine hits?
- Are we rested, aligned, and ready – or just surviving?
These are our version of sleep metrics. They force us to slow down, reflect, and stay honest about the cost of “progress.”
From Monitoring to Mindfulness
Technology like Garmin made it possible for me to see patterns in my sleep. But the goal wasn’t to optimize everything. It was to listen better. To adjust with intention. The same is true for how we build companies and how we use technology to give us metrics that matter.
We’re not just here to scale. We’re here to build something that gives energy, not just takes it.
Mirror Moment
Where in your business (or life) are you logging hours but not feeling restored?
What’s your version of a “sleep score”?
What would you start tracking—if only to ask better questions?
Thanks for reading.
More signal, less noise.
— Brandon
