SLEEP DREAMS

Margaret Thatcher, who was known for sleeping only four hours a night, is often credited with saying “sleep is for wimps!” But sleep is actually work. Putting down the phone, setting aside personal or political worries—these require discipline. True relaxation calls for training.

- As told to ELANA KLEIN, WIRED's associate manager of audience development.

Traditionally, sleep coaches treat newborns (and their exhausted parents). But recently, as anxieties about sleep have spiked, grownups have found they need help with their habits too. A Gallup poll from 2023 found that 57 percent of Americans think they would feel better with more sleep, up from just 43 percent in 2013. Only about a fourth of those surveyed reported getting the commonly recommended eight or more hours per night—down from 34 percent 10 years prior.

Sleep professionals are seizing the opportunity to help adults realize their dream of waking up rested. WIRED spoke to a sleep consultant who, after years of working with kids, tapped into that underserved population. She says it’s entirely possible to transform daytime and nighttime habits to optimize for good sleep. Why not start tonight?

USUALLY, AN ADULT comes to me with one of two things: First, a major life event—work stress, having a baby, losing a parent, a relationship ending—that destabilizes their system. Sleep is always the first thing to go. The second is that they have a chronic pattern. There are people who’ve really struggled with sleep since childhood, and then it becomes a part of how they see themselves. They’ve tried everything, and then they say, “I’m an insomniac.”

In both cases, they’re exhausted. I always laugh, because when I’m cornered at a dinner party it’s like, “Oh, I just have a quick question. I haven’t slept through the night in 19 years.”