252. QuitTok returns, rising Gen-Z confidence and LinkedIn’s most memorable interviews. PLUS! Do high achievers really sleep less?

0:02Coming up this week in work. Good news. Yay. Confidence is rising among entry level staff and falling at the top. There's always a catch, isn't there? A new Glassdoor report shows early career workers are feeling more hopeful, while senior leaders are quietly struggling. So what is behind the split? And should we be worried about where leadership confidence is heading? Also this week, Quit Talk is back. People are quitting their jobs and they're filming it. It's making a lot of HR leaders quite nervous. Is this as simple as Gen Z attention seeking, pesky gen zed or is it a very public signal that something deeper has gone wrong with how we listen to our employees plus in truth or lie we're tackling one of the biggest myths in the business world do high achievers really need less sleep from margaret thatcher to elon musk the legend says four hours a night is all you need but let's see what the science says shall we this is truth lies and work the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:07My name is Leanne. I'm a charter occupational psychologist. And my name is Al. I'm a business owner. And together we help you build amazing workplace cultures. Well, we're getting stuck into this week's episode after a very quick word from our lovely sponsors. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. Mm-hmm. But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data.

1:38Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

1:55Okay, welcome back. It's Leanne's favorite time of the week. It's time for the... We've been saying this for 252, well, no, half that. About 200 episodes is your favourite time of the week. Is it really your favourite time of the week? Sure. For production purposes, it is Leanne's favourite time of the week. It's time for the news roundup. It is. I'll cue that jingle. Pressing the button right now. Go ahead, my love. What is your most memorable interview moment? You're talking to me? Yes. I've only had about four interviews ever in my entire life. My most memorable one was when I went to see a guy and it was for a commission only door to door.

2:33But they don't tell you that. What they do is they say, great, come in for interview. And then they just ask you a little bit about yourself. Yeah, okay, we're going to go out and see some customers. And you get on a train with a stranger and then you go out and knock on some doors. And at no point has anyone said until literally knock on that first door, at no point does anyone say, we're knocking on doors. They say we are a direct sales organization who meets the customers where they are. That was an extremely strange situation. Well, that is quite strange. That is quite strange. I asked you this question, Al, because it's a question asked by Maria Healy on LinkedIn this week.

3:14You know, I like to keep an eye on the LinkedIn. Maria's in marketing operations, if you're interested. And she asked, what's your most memorable job interview moment? I'll go first. In the early 2000s, I was told I couldn't be interviewed at Glamour Shots. Yes, that one, because I was wearing jeans. In my defence, they were the dark trouser-like jeans from Express. I was in my early 20s and I hadn't been told this was a no-go ahead of time. Also around the same time, I had a humiliating interview with the picture people in which I had to pretend the hiring manager interviewing me was a stubborn child.

3:46I had to make a smile for the camera. Wow. Just so we're clear, what's Glamour Shots? I did look into this because I must admit my UK brain went there as well. We use glamour, I think, in a slightly different way culturally. I was thinking glamour shots a bit like a... Glamour model. Only fans in print. Page three of the sun, yeah. No, glamour shots is like... You know how they have those companies where you'll go to the studio and you'll get your hair and makeup done and then they'll take really awkward pictures of you? Right. It's that. Oh, I see. Okay. It's that. Anyway, I thought this is a really good post.

4:20but as always the party is happening in the comments people started sharing their most memorable interview moments and they're just brilliant full disclosure I have asked Maria for her permission to talk about her post and the people who left the comments so if you do go to the original post and you're wondering why I haven't read some out it's because those people either didn't get back to me in time or didn't want to participate grumpy they probably just didn't get back to me in time but some people did and we love them for it first up Dr Elaine Smith hey we love Elaine friend of the show so Dr Elaine said definitely being asked to walk heel-toe at my police medical and proceedings do more of a tame dance move than the required assessment of balance still mortified and not in the police what's heel-toe is that what you like is that what the Americans do for drunk driving tests where you have to walk along a line or something oh I see right okay yeah I don't think I could do that I think she went more waltz than a balance.

5:21Then we had Sean Morrissey. Sean said, during a previous job search, a stealth startup put me through a first interview with a panel of their co-founders. No one would tell me what the company did, but meanwhile, the CEO was openly asking for someone who would commit up front to working five years for this mystery business. Wow. Confidence here. Confidence or paranoia. Yeah, just kept doing NDNDA. That's not an NDA, NDA. I just stubber stammered. An NDA, non-disclosure agreement. It's a really strong NDA, an NDA, NDA. Non-disclosure, non-minimal disclosure. Yeah, no, sorry, carry on. Yeah, Stephen Lockhart, who's in pre-sales and enablement.

6:03That's nice. Stephen said, I was once asked if I like karaoke in a peer group interview. I responded with, you are my fire. my one desire brilliant did you dance moves i don't know i don't know i hope you did but i'll be honest if i was in a peer group interview and somebody did that i'd be like mate yeah welcome welcome welcome brilliant uh another one came from parmin singh duke i think is how you pronounce it apologies parmin if i've not pronounced that correctly um who said once during a virtual interview i didn't know how to answer a question and i froze the interview panel the interview panel thought my screen froze so it gave me a few seconds to gather my thoughts that's brilliant oh i'm doing that next time in an interview i'm gonna do that yeah that is brilliant if i could if i'm like what's the next question yeah yeah that's brilliant well done parming i love that it's yeah it's it's a very it's thinking on your feet that one isn't it thinking on your feet We had then one from Bethany Kamasura.

7:12Lovely name. There's some great names on this thread. I know. And here's us with like Al and Leanne Elliott. There you go. Hello. Yeah. So Bethany, Bethany had a little chat actually. So her comment said, I was asked, are you smart? Spell Microsoft. We can all spell Microsoft. I think most of us can spell Microsoft. It's not. Yeah. Another very odd CEO here. So Bethany told me for backstory, the guy ended up being a total psycho. pressured me into substantially lower pay than I was making and basically told me I'd be stupid if I didn't accept. I was in college and felt very overcome by his intense, toxic masculine energy.

7:47I accepted and literally walked out the door and emailed and told him I wasn't interested. He went off the rails threatening to call my current employer and telling me I was making a big mistake. Huge. And I better be careful. Such a wild experience. Oh, goodness. Bethany, I dodged a bullet there. Yes, you did. A couple more. Karen Butterfield another excellent name Karen oh come on I love it Karen Butterfield who is a strategic marketing expert this was a lovely one I also had a little chat with Karen as well afterwards her comment said my twin and I had been cleaning a bed and breakfast and babysitting for years but when we turned 16 we interviewed at a restaurant yes together and we both got the job we high-fived thinking back it was kind of adorable I loved working with my sister Oh, that's cute.

8:37Isn't that sweet? Although if I had an identical twin, I would definitely, I'd definitely just not tell them I got a twin and then I could work half the hours. So anyway, any more? Yes, Al Popper. Oh my God. These names. You can't make this up. Al's, this is, you know, the them, me, them. Oh, yeah, yeah. Them, you can't interview in jeans. Me, removes pants. Them, well played. No, you're down. very good just got to show that all the owls in the world are funny Al Bundy Al Popper Al Elliot yes very good indeed yeah thank you again to Maria Healy for putting on such a brilliant post I'm really enjoying these lighter posts at the minute and yes we did get some light trauma dumping there as well which you know sharing sharing is caring but some brilliantly funny ones in there as well is there a winner for you Al do you have a favourite I well obviously I have to stick together I think Al's comment was brilliant although I suspect that's more for comedic value than actually what happened um i do you know i'm just i'm just with the names um yeah i've got i've i'm loving kamasura i'm loving butterfield um i'm loving singh doot uh just to be honest i'm just enjoying all of them so yeah yeah well done all of you you're all congratulations yep i will leave a link to uh the original post from maria healy in the show notes enjoy well go sorry go on no go on please i was gonna say and then what i've seen this week and then i thought you're about to invite me to tell me i was i was but but please i just jumped in go for asking me leanne what i've seen this week um i've seen something this week which also i've seen about um about five years ago uh it's something called well it's basically quitting in public which is not a new thing but i did see a new name for it which was quick talk which i thought was quite funny quick talk where people i don't i don't think that is that new is that not new i don't know i thought this is already a thing but maybe i'm thinking like rage questing or something that's very kind of you thank you so but it's back if it did exist before it's back it was big during the great resignation back in 2021 it's having a resurgence and this new name that no one's ever heard of before called quit talk now i think at first we might go oh my goodness what are you doing why are you filming you quitting on tiktok instagram YouTube shorts whatever um but actually I was thinking about this there are enough there are enough videos on there now to create kind of almost like a database of reasons why people might not be happy in their jobs so if you look at it from an HR point of view going oh really bad oh bad unprofessional and going hold on a minute people are putting in public why you're actually quitting and I thought that was a really really yeah I thought that was really cool um so I think Basically, my thought was if someone's annoyed enough to post publicly, then it's serious enough that you should take it seriously.

11:30So I prepared a report. When I say I, I mean Google Gemini. One of my first times using Google Gemini to do this kind of thing. I'm a clawed boy normally. But this report, I will give anyone who wants it. Just get in touch with us. I'll give you this report. But they said these are the top four reasons why people leave. Toxic leadership and malignant culture. Yes, well, of course. I mean, that's pretty obvious. But they did say underneath this, employees are not leaving jobs. They are fleeing managers. If there was one thing you did in your organization, Leanne, what would it be? Train your managers, Al.

12:02So there you go. Burnout and well-being collapse. Someone once, this is a Quick Talk creator, apparently said, it's like an elephant took its foot off my chest when they quit. Quite visceral imagery there. Again, Gemini might have made this all. The number three is compensation and feeling undervalued. The issue, this is what Gemini says, the issue is ready with just a dollar amount. It's the combination of low pay with feeling unappreciated. Apparently, 63 % of workers who quit in 2021 cited low pay as a top reason. The source is Pew Research 2022. There you go. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

12:37Sounds like. And the fourth one was lack of growth and role mismatch. People saying that they didn't have any advancement opportunities or when they're, this is what Gemini says, when employees are mismatched to a role, there's no clear path forward. Disengage and leave. leave what are your thoughts i mean it's not groundbreaking but it is showing that it is showing that if if business owners leaders aren't paying attention to what actually creates employee engagement and engages people in the workplace then they are going to leave and we know this from the research what the ones you said there are in terms of um culture yeah so that's usually because then people are misaligned with their culture doesn't reflect the same values the way that they want to operate in the world uh managers relationship with managers single biggest impact on productivity performance well-being if that ain't working they aren't working um pay and being valued that's recognition which is hugely important and i said i've said a few times recently recognition is coming back and it's coming back in a way that is expanding beyond uh salary and benefits well-being that's resilience and that's not just down to individual resilience that's how an organization helps employees build their resilience by setting boundaries in the workplace and in terms of development that's two main things in terms of role my role isn't stretching me enough and resources I'm not getting the the resources to invest in in myself and my professional development that I want you've just named all six of the seven R's in the RX7 which is our impersonal employee engagement model and survey so not groundbreaking for me but anecdotally these types of story or anecdotal stories tend to resonate a lot more with people um so yeah if you're a business owner and i'm wondering what you can do i would say go and read our report and get yourself onto uh onto the tiktok yeah absolutely i also asked gemini um i said what why would people want to do this in public um and gemini was gemini basically said the key reason is nobody at work would listen.

14:40Public resignation is a symptom of failed internal channels. So, I mean, there is also those people who want to do it for engagement. Sorry, if you can hear a slight noise in the background. We've got a little puppy at the moment. No, he's not puppy, he's nine years old. But he's managed to do something to his tail. So he's in a massive cone. And this cone is bigger than him and basically scrapes it along the wall. So you're going to hear a little bit of that. I apologize, can't take that out of post. There's no anti-cone button on Final Cut Pro. Anyway, Lee, what else have you seen, my love? Entry-level workers are feeling more hopeful than their bosses right now.

15:11That's interesting. That's a bit of a turn, isn't it? It is a bit of a turn. This was the headline article this week in Fast Company by Susan Roman. I have been in touch with Susan and given her a little hat tip for the quality of her article. She's got some more research coming out, so we'll keep an eye. We'll stay connected, Susan. Susan is a senior lecturer of management at Bentley University and is commenting in his article on some data from Glassdoor, which is basically, as we kind of alluded to, showing the opposite of what we usually think the trend is in terms of confidence in the workplace.

15:46Just in case anyone's not heard of Glassdoor, Glassdoor is almost like a trip advisor for jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Nice, nice. So according to Glassdoor's latest data, confidence is actually going up among early and mid-career workers. so entry-level employees have seen confidence rise by 1.9 percentage points and mid-level rolls up 2.3 and this is after a year of layoffs restructures hiring freezes all the things that should make younger workers feel a little bit nervous but instead they're stabilizing and a lot of cases start to feel more empowered so Susan suggests a few reasons for this first she said that Gen Z and younger millennials essentially grew up in disruption lockdown remote schooling unpredictable job markets instability was kind of their starting point it was their baseline norm so they're not treating change like it's a crisis they're just treating it as like this is just the way things are second careers for early stage workers look completely different now and in terms specifically in terms of identity and stability not coming from one employer so we're seeing a lot of mixed ways of working in terms of projects skill skill building personal networks online communities jobs that are moving more fluidly between roles and industries and it gives them a kind of psychological safety net that if one thing fails they've got other things that they can lean into also and I thought this is a really interesting one Susan believes that they are defining success differently so it's not about climbing a ladder it's about agency which is basically our ability to shape what's around us to have some sort of control in terms of our working week flexibility working making these more lateral job moves to develop skills contributing ideas early just this small dose of autonomy of building confidence interesting stuff at a senior level though Susan says confidence has been falling month after month and it's actually a pretty stark picture.

17:49So leaders are under pressure from every direction, hybrid work, global economic uncertainty, political instability affecting trade, retention issues never fully recovered after the great resignation and now the pressure of AI both strategically and ethically. There's no need to answers. Decision fatigue is setting in. Susan also noticed that at board level confidence is slipping. So this is the highest of the highest levels. Many leaders feel torn between being empathetic and being decisive and the emotional load of doing both all the time is wearing people down. We call that emotional labour in the science.

18:27So Susan notes that some executives are questioning whether they're keeping up, especially as younger employees move faster, adapt faster, expect more transparency. I'm not going to lie, Gen Z are also quite quick to point out how irrelevant we are as older generations millennials included so that doesn't help um so anyway susan says you're getting a split workforce by younger employees are getting confidence through adaptability community and self-direction and senior leaders are losing confidence because they're trying to create stability and a world where stability just isn't available alistair thoughts i've heard you say this so many times gen z basically they want like you said agency they want control of the life that works a part of their life.

19:10So that makes sense that there's a bit of chaos, but they're like, that's fine. I'll just get another job. I'll get another gig. You know, I've got my side hustle to keep me going. That'll pay the rent. And then my job's one for perhaps I don't know, chopping up or something. If you do like, if you're interested in this, then we've got a friend of the show, Rob Kalvorowski is coming back on. He's going to talk about capitalizing on chaos. He says essentially that 2026 is all going to be about chaos and there's huge opportunities for people to go in there and capitalize on it. So it's going to be very, very interesting.

19:37but board level i tell you see i'd get this because what i'm hearing as like a lay person is the lower down the the chain the responsibility chain the fewer responsibilities you got so you're like oh you're fine the higher up the more responsibilities you're getting and the more pressure you're getting so it's like oh my god like there's so many um articles i've seen recently saying that nobody wants to be a manager anymore yeah that makes me sad yeah it makes me sad but i can also 100 see it because like why for an extra little pay bump and then you're gonna get all this bullshit. And then you've got AI going and middle managers are always the first to go.

20:11And then you've got AI replacing middle. Oh man, it's tough out there. Take care, kids. It is tough out there. The thing I'd say on that is that if we look at the kind of the reports that are showing the skills that are going to be the most important in an AI world, it's all those very human skills in terms of your ability to listen, your ability to connect, your ability to empathize, to coach. All these things are going to get even more important. So don't snooze on that, Gen Z. We need to be developing those skills, but that doesn't mean necessarily you need to be developing them in a management position, of course.

20:44I think as well for any business owners or founders listening, if you're starting to see the kind of confidence crisis or you're starting to feel this confidence crisis, I think it's just understanding how comfortable you are with change and what your relationship with change is, particularly if you are a person that always likes to be in control, who likes to predict what's coming is maybe very data orientated your relationship with this uncertainty is going to be be really really important so as you said definitely tune into that upcoming episode with Rob on how you can capitalize on this chaos and in terms of early work is good for you I'm loving that you are feeling more confident I'm loving that you're starting to see just see the value in your adaptability and your flexibility but as I said don't snooze on those core skills when it comes to actually how you engage with and influence people they are going to be things that that will separate you from the rest um but a really good article i thought and um and i really like susan my case can i just read you this little bit of the message well if i said no would you still do it yeah yeah you would so this is what i think me and susan are gonna vibe together um she said to me i find some generational topics are biased in their presentation we try to look things from several vantage points.

22:01Brilliant. Lovely. It's not just villainizing Gen Z or any generation. So I love that. I will leave a link to the article in the show notes. It's called Why Entry Level Workers Are More Hopeful Than Their Bosses Right Now by Susan Roman in Fast Company. Lovely. Thank you, Susan. Beautiful. If you've seen something you want Leanne and I to talk about, let's be honest, you want Leanne to talk about, not me, then head over to the show notes. There's email in there. You can get in touch or you can find Leanne on LinkedIn. She is fairly active on LinkedIn. Fairly. Yeah, yeah, big deal, big deal. Okay, so we're going to go to a very short break.

22:34After this break, we've got truth or lie. This is where we, or basically, I ask Leanne a question. Is this a truth or is this a lie? And Leanne basically psychologises for about 15 minutes and tells us whether it is a truth or lie. And after that, our world famous weekly workplace surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Don't go anywhere. Okay, welcome back. And we're going to start off with a joke about DEI. everyone hold their breath there we go what's the RuPaul thing I can't wait to see how this turns out so this is on dad jokes a subreddit on reddit which I think is kind of funny because I'm not a dad but I'm definitely of that age so it says I asked my son what he learnt at school today he said gay men like Sony lesbians favourite Yamaha and transgender people prefer Bose kneeling down I put my hand on his shoulder and replied son those are just stereotypes

23:30silence okay so if you want to hear more material than that then come to my open mic night which will be nobody coming there so it's time for our truth or lie which is as you know this is our weekly myth busting segment where we take a popular psychological claim and ask is it true or is it a lie so far we've learned that left brain creativity isn't really a thing maslow did not draw a triangle no she didn't was it elaine who was uh who was it yes yes yes yes yes dr enya doyle she just it she couldn't get her head around it um and she could it's obviously a joke um and also we learned the vibe does attract your tribe we also learned whether you can tell whether someone's lying by their facial expressions uh no no that was a lie this week we've got quite a big one so i've heard about this in business books there's things in productivity circles LinkedIn motivational posts, they all say high achievers sleep less.

24:24But my question, Leanne, is, is this true? Can you really survive on just four hours of sleep a night? I want to get into this one properly. I've done so much research on this and really dug around to find out exactly what is occurring because it has been glamorized for years, hasn't it? We see so many names get thrown around. Margaret Thatcher, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, even Martha Stewart claims that she only needs four hours a night to run her very successful business she did go to jail though so that was she also did do a really great advert for lighters with snoop dog she did her and snoop are just someone else aren't they they're apparently quite good mates yeah they're proper good mates yeah there's a documentary about martha stewart on netflix it's really good actually really good her whole like comeback thing was basically she roasted um justin bieber by making fun of the fact that she went to jail.

25:18And he didn't? No. Well, at that point, the thought was he might. Oh, I see. So that's why they brought her in to kind of like try and snap him out of it with humour. Anyway. Anyway, the point is, Martha Stewart. Why are you going on about Martha Stewart? We want to talk about people who sleep for four hours a night. Yeah, it sounds impressive, doesn't it? It sounds very disciplined. It sounds like the secret to squeezing extra life out of the day. Let's look at the science behind it. Let's look at the part people tend to skip. I'm going to start with the case for against, Dal. I know I normally start four.

25:47I'm going to start with against because this is actually where the majority of the research and evidence sits. Right. The fact is most humans cannot function on four hours sleep per night. Fair. They just can't. Long sleep studies consistently show that short sleep harms almost every important function we have as humans. So a huge body of sleep research has shown this pattern again and again and again. One of the clearest is a health study from Norway with more than 8 ,000 adults aged 40 to 45. It found that people who slept less than six hours a night had higher rates of poor concentration, slower reaction times, memory problems, irritability, higher levels of daytime sleepiness, more sickness absence, greater risk of long-term health problems.

26:36And these weren't tiny effects. Across the data set, the people sleeping under six hours showed measurable drops in mental performance, moved control and overall health. Another example comes from a controlled sleep restriction experiment. Torture, basically. In the paper, Sleep Duration, Sleep Need and Sleep Hazards from Oxford Academics. So some quality research here. Participants were assigned four different sleep doses, four hours, six hours or normal sleep. and the researchers tracked cognitive performance during waking hours using reaction time tests, memory tasks, attention activities, that type of thing.

27:15Those on four hours sleep a night showed major declines in alertness, repeated micro-sleeps, that's where moments where the brain just briefly shuts down, difficulty regulating emotion, slower decision making, and a growing impairment each day the restriction continued. Wow. Yeah. So the other interesting finding in terms of the four-hour condition, what participants said is they felt that they were coping after a few days, but their performance continued to decline. So it shows something really important that we're actually really bad at judging how cognitively impaired we are on a lack of sleep.

27:53Fair. Yeah. And I mean, it's also survival because there's going to be parents listening to this going, well, yeah, because if I did realize I'd probably not get out of bed ever again. So there is a survival aspect to this as well. But in terms of the impact of restricting our sleep, huge issues, both mentally and physiologically. Another big thing in the sleep research is that chronic short sleep is linked to serious long-term health risks. Physiological evidence in terms of sleep deprivation is strong. Right. Really strong. A review from the British Psychological Society looked at lots of different studies and found that regularly sleeping under six hours raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, weight gain, weakened immunity and higher all-cause mortality.

28:43Wow, that's a catch-all you don't want to be part of. It really isn't. All-cause mortality. So basically, you sleep, you don't sleep much, you sleep longer when you... I was going to get really dark. Yeah, you'll sleep long eventually. Your body will find a way to sleep. Yeah, exactly. Honestly, the list just kept going. Blood pressure changes, inflammation markers, hormonal disruption. They all rise under chronic short sleep and none of the effects were subtle. So in terms of successful people claiming four hours is fine. Well, yes, but they may actually not be sleeping for four hours. We could have some porcupines.

29:20I believe Donald Trump famously only sleeps four hours a night. And I'm not saying he isn't the most reliable in terms of being truthful. but I am saying there are sometimes some question marks around his stories. Yes, bleach. So yeah, sleep research is a basic point. It's that public figures could well nap during the day, sleep more at weekends, or simply report, under-report on how long they sleep. Lie. Yeah, and actually there is, you can always, and this is what we talked about last week, wasn't it, in terms of deception detection. It's finding the inconsistencies in somebody's story. So Elon Musk has publicly claimed four to five hours, but then in later interviews said he often sleeps six plus.

29:57Margaret Thatcher reportedly only slept four hours but also took afternoon naps and regularly slept on flights. I think it was Jack Dorsey. It was like he said he only needed six hours, five or five hours sleep per night to allow him to spend 10 hours on each of his companies. It's like, dude, that's 25 hours. To be fair, Jack Dorsey, I think he's the guy, co-founder of Twitter, also called Square. He is actually a bit of a genius and also quite a strange guy for someone who's so wealthy because I think he also he also created Vine which is now yeah he's now relaunched as D-Vine yeah well maybe the secret success is finding an extra hour on the day Al that's what it's not fair he gets the extra hour that's why he's a billionaire he's in a different time dimension add that up that's a lot of hours over the year I love it okay so that's that's against it's seeming unlikely at this point yes I'm not convinced I think it's a load of rubbish.

30:53Yeah, until this one research comes in. And it's really interesting. I'd never heard about it before, which makes me wonder actually. I think it's still maybe emerging. There has been some reports in major media about it. And a recent study has looked into it again. But basically what we're finding is a tiny number of people really can function on four hours sleep a night. Okay. So extreme rare genetic mutations are responsible for some people genuinely being able to sleep shorter. So they're called natural short sleepers. So the most famous gene that enables this gene mutation is called DEC2.

31:32First identified in a 2009 study. Basically, people with this mutation naturally slept around four and a half hours, yet showed no signs of impairment on cognitive tests. more recent work into this has expanded the area 2025 study by Chen et al looked at the SIK3N783Y mutation oh I've heard of that one yeah yeah yeah so families with this mutation consistently slept about four to six hours they did not show the typical signs of sleep deprivation But importantly, this mutation is extremely rare in the population. We're thinking at most 1%. So most people who think they're functioning on four hours either have this gene, they're in that 1 % or they don't and they're really not.

32:25What's so cool about this gene mutation is that natural short sleepers do feel fully rested. so that's a clear distinction with people with these mutations they woke up spontaneously this isn't just setting an alarm for four hours they felt mentally clear they showed no cognitive decline under testing and they maintained a stable mood and health markers um consistently on four hours sleep there was actually as well a um example in this of a woman who's in her 80s who's always slept three to four hours a night and is thriving wow who has this genetic mutation wow it is like it's like science fiction kind of stuff isn't it um so it's it's one of those where is it a truth or is it a lie it's true it's true a tiny number of people that have these genetic mutations can mean that they can function at a high level with very little sleep that is true and the evidence for these natural short sleepers is pretty solid it's emerging so we still need a lot more but it's pretty solid especially because we have some data fresh out in 2025 but it does also really need to be emphasized that they are biologically rare for everybody else which is basically 99 of the population regularly sleeping four hours does exactly what decades of reach says it will it will weaken memory it will slow thinking it will mean poor emotional control it'll be more mistakes more accidents high risk of illness faster burnout and the fact that you might feel fine for a few days is also a complete illusion created by your brain to just get through and enter this this survival mode so in terms of yes some people are wide to thrive on very little sleep but these are because of genetic mutations it's not a model that the rest of us can train ourselves into we can't suddenly decide we're only going to sleep four hours because that's what's going to make us uber successful it's not i'd be interested so i'm i'm i don't know whether there's any study or a study would be possible on this to find out if there is a higher percentage of successful people who have this now what was the was it me c7 or something yeah there's a couple of different genes that have been linked to these um natural shorter sleepers so i think that would be the interesting thing wouldn't it to look at people like jack dorsey you know musk and donald trump that that profess to be able to to sleep and actually include people like that in these studies uh to see if they do and i guess that's where the where the science and the research will need to expand into is what are the general life outcomes of the people who have this mutation and is it linked to more success in the workplace yeah interesting okay thank you very much that was a good one i really really liked that one yeah this is sounding more and more professional by the week thank you okay so we're on to the world famous workplace surgery where i ask your questions to leanne that's not right the world famous work weekly workplace surgery we get questions you know what i'm saying question it's a surgery there's questions i'm going to answer them yes come on what else do you want this is an ikea section you can put it put it together yourself question number one am i the asshole i love this there's a it's a hashtag A-M-I-A, isn't it?