When sacrificing sleep to do important work or play I've often made the remark, "I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead." But little did I realize that by not getting adequate sleep I was working to bring that day closer.
I was clued into this fact by the various Paleo resources I've studied over the past few years particularly Robb Wolf's, The Paleo Solution. So I started paying attention to how I functioned on various levels of sleep. I learned that I was able to think, act and feel much better when I was well rested. I remember thinking, "Does anyone else know about this? It is actually possible to walk around with nearly super-human ability simply by consistently getting a full night of sleep!"
Now in my defense, I not only attended college but also have two young children and have worked primarily at technology start-ups throughout my career. So sleep was scarce in my life and somehow I just had to find a way to get things done.
But it's not super-human, it's regular-human to sleep when tired, wake up well rested and feel alert and energetic during your days. A good sign of trouble is you need chemicals to wake up and function at all and at bedtime you can't figure out how to fall asleep.
So I failed to mention in my initial post on my plan to win at the game of life that one other thing that is going to help me meet my health goals is to get plenty of glorious sleep. You too should get plenty of sleep tonight, you deserve it!