Sophie Bostock

Sleeping for Peak Performance: How Sleep Works, and How to Make the Most of Yours

What difference does an hour less sleep really make to your performance? Can you adapt to short sleep? How does poor sleep impact on teamwork and decision-making?

If you understand the systems which control your sleep, you will know which levers will be most important to you to improve your sleep and recovery. When it comes to putting changes into practice, the more sleep deprived we are, the harder it becomes to change behaviour… so change has to be easy.

In this session, find out:

• Which aspects of your performance are most vulnerable to sleep loss
• The hidden impacts of poor sleep on workplace performance
• The 3 systems which control how well you sleep, and how to influence them
• How to put healthier sleep habits into practice

Sleeping with Uncertainty and Change

Do you wake up in the early hours with a racing mind? Worrying about work, what needs to be done, or just that you’re short of sleep? You’re not alone. But worry doesn’t have to keep you up at night. Sleep and our emotions are intimately linked. In this session, we unpick the vicious cycle of stress and sleep loss, and how to get you sleep back on track.

What we’ll cover:

• How the brain responds to sleep loss and how this alters our physical health, emotional
  reactivity and behaviour
• The core systems which control sleep quality, and how to make them work to your advantage
• How to overcome sleep procrastination
• Techniques for falling asleep and getting back to sleep that you can start to practice tonight

Fighting Fatigue: How to manage your energy when you’re under pressure

How can we perform at our best, more of the time? We may have no choice but to squeeze more into our days, but this can interfere with sleep and recovery. In this session we’ll explore what the science of sleep and circadian rhythms can teach us about boosting energy when we need it. We’ll apply insights from high pressure settings in the military and elite sport and discuss how to apply them to your everyday work.

Find out:

• Why there is more to fatigue than lack of sleep
• How you could structure your diary to make the most of your unique patterns in
• mental and physical performance
• Tactics to reduce fatigue and boost motivation in the moment, without relying on caffeine or stimulants
• What triggers a stress response, and strategies for switching off

What’s different about women’s sleep? Strategies for coping

Anyone can suffer from sleep problems, but statistically, women report higher rates of disturbed sleep than men, starting at puberty. Why? What impact does this have on key life stages? And what can we do about it?

In this session, we’ll explore:

• How sleep changes at different life stages, and in response to hormonal changes
• The most common sleep challenges affecting men and women
• Why the differences in sleep between men and women may not be what they seem
• The most effective strategies to help with sleep when your hormones have other ideas