Sleep Problems After 50: A Former Executive's 4-Step Routine That Finally Worked
3:17 AM. I know the exact time because I stared at it every single night for ten years. Not sometimes. Not occasionally. Every night. My eyes would snap open at 3:17, my heart already pounding, my brain already running through tomorrow's board meeting or next quarter's revenue forecast. I would lie there, staring at the ceiling, calculating numbers that didn't need calculating at three in the morning. During my years as a corporate executive, I slept four to five hours a night and called it discipline. My colleagues bragged about sleeping less. "I only need four hours," one senior VP used to say, like sleep deprivation was a competitive sport. We were all competing to see who could destroy themselves fastest. I was winning. Then I retired at 57. No more 6 AM conference calls. No more hoesik (회식) running until midnight. No more quarterly reports. And I still couldn't sleep. That's when I realized: the problem wasn't my schedule. The problem was that t...