I have a confession.
I am a performance psychologist. I study elite athletes. I teach mental performance for a living. And for years, I was terrible at sleep.
Not because I didn’t know better. I knew exactly what the research said. I knew what it cost me. I did it anyway.
Here’s what it looked like. My wife Julie and I would end up in bed with our phones. Me, still working. Still thinking about the next thing. Still convinced I had to squeeze one more hour out of the day before I earned the right to rest.
The problem is that rest doesn’t work that way.
A bad night leaves me operating at 37% capacity. I’ve told clients this. I’ve felt it in my body. It’s like driving a Tesla that never gets a full charge. You know the car works. You know what it’s capable of. But you’re constantly managing how far you push it because the battery never recovered.
That’s not performance. That’s survival.
So Julie and I made a decision. No electronics in the bedroom. Full stop. No phones. No tablets. No “just one more email.” The bedroom became the one place where work doesn’t follow us.
It felt uncomfortable at first. The pull to keep working is real. When you love what you do and you’re building something, stopping feels like losing ground. But I had to be honest with myself. A drained version of me serves no one. Not my clients. Not my family. Not the work itself.
Here’s what the data shows about elite performers:
Roger Federer and LeBron James both prioritize 10-12 hours of sleep, including naps
Elite athletes track sleep the way they track training
High performers protect their sleep environment with the same intentionality they bring to competition prep
The average person fits sleep into whatever time is left; elite performers build everything else around it
Sleep is not passive. It is a performance variable. The best in the world treat it that way.
Your challenge this week:
Pick one thing to remove from your bedroom tonight. Phone. Tablet. Laptop. One thing. Do it for seven days and track how you feel on day seven compared to day one.
Your performance starts the night before.
Your Mental Coach,
Dr. Mat Park
