I originally titled this post “Sleep Less and Get More Done” back in 2010. I was recording at nearly two in the morning, fueled by enthusiasm and the kind of hustle mentality that was common in internet marketing circles at the time. Let me revisit this advice with sixteen years of additional perspective.
The Real Point: Small Time Investments Add Up
The core idea I was getting at is still valid, even if my original framing was a little extreme. As a part-time internet entrepreneur, you are constantly looking for pockets of time to work on your business. And the truth is, most people have more available time than they think.
Can you wake up fifteen or twenty minutes earlier than usual? Can you stay up an extra half hour after the family goes to bed? Those small windows of time, applied consistently, add up to real progress over weeks and months. Fifteen minutes a day is almost two hours a week. Over a year, that is roughly one hundred hours of additional work on your business.
What I Would Not Recommend in 2026
I would not recommend chronically sacrificing sleep. We know far more about the science of sleep now than we did in 2010, and the research is clear: sustained sleep deprivation impairs decision-making, creativity, and productivity. If you are running on five hours of sleep every night, you are not doing your best work during those extra hours anyway.
What I would recommend instead is auditing your existing time. Most people spend significant chunks of their evening on activities that could be reduced or eliminated — scrolling social media, watching television, browsing content that does not move their business forward. Reclaiming even a fraction of that time is more sustainable than cutting into sleep.
The Season of Hustle
There is a concept I still believe in: the season of hustle. There will be periods in your business — a product launch, a critical deadline, a window of opportunity — where it makes sense to push harder than usual. During those seasons, going to bed a little later or getting up a little earlier is perfectly reasonable.
The key is that it should be a season, not a lifestyle. New parents survive months of broken sleep because they know it is temporary. You can apply the same intensity to your business in short bursts, as long as you recover afterward.
Find the time. Protect your energy. Build your business one night at a time — but make sure you are actually getting enough sleep to make those nights count.
