Why We Sleep

Some of us look for a lot of ways to improve ourselves and our outcomes. But in so doing, we often neglect perhaps our most important tool: sleep. The benefits of a full eight hours are numerous, and fully detailed in Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.

I knew sleep was important, but I had no idea just how important until reading this book. The claims are almost outlandish, in that sleep affects such a wide range of areas, from health (e.g. reducing risk of Alzheimer's, heart attacks etc) to memory and everything in between, that it is hard to believe them all. Yet it's impossible to believe none of it. It's likely that increasing the time you allot for sleep is the simplest, easiest and yet most effective thing you can do to improve yourself overall.

There are a lot of stats thrown at the reader in the book. They are useful, but at times the material can get so dry that the book may directly succeed in its end goal of increasing user sleep times. I also would have liked to read a little bit more on lucid dreaming. The author seemed to imply that it is an innate talent, but I'm not so sure about that. I'm interested in learning this skill, but would have liked more info about the author's take on that.

Other than that, I found this work to be excellent. I highly recommend the book, as it will likely serve as a reminder/motivation to increase your own sleep time.