When people comment that I seem to juggle an overwhelming number of interests and obligations, I usually joke that my secret is stopping sleeping and going to the bathroom to free up time.

And, frankly, I wish that were true. Some people seem to get by remarkably well on just three or four hours of sleep a night. Sadly, I’m not one of them.

Sure, for short stretches, usually during production on a film, I’ve gone entire weeks with less than ten or eleven hours of shut-eye. But, by and large, as I scale back from a solid eight hours a night, I start to feel increasingly off. Most people pour on the caffeine to push through, but I often find coffee hits me the hardest – and least helpfully – when I need it most. Perhaps it’s my already manic, fast-talking personality, or my hummingbird metabolism, but several cups of joe after a few sleep-deprived nights mainly leaves me twitching, with jumbled thoughts and a tongue that can’t seem to form sounds in time with the thoughts my brain is trying to push out.

The past week, which so far has featured evening drinks each night followed by breakfast meetings each following morning, already has me piling up the sleep debt. And, after just a few days, the effects are already starting to wear on me. I lose my train of thought in mid-sentence, find myself frequently looking up in the air as if perhaps what I’m trying to say might be written on a tele-prompter just over a conversation partner’s shoulder.

This morning, though, in searching for a set of financials from an earlier company that I could repurpose into support material for Long Tail, I stumbled across an essay I had written a few years back for one of the slew of now defunct e-business trade publications. Reading it, I was startled by my own prior thinking. As Cyan and Long Tail are both undoubtedly long-hauls, perhaps it’s time to start taking some of my own earlier medicine: sleeping through the night and trying to live with a bit more sanity.

The article:

A few weeks ago, I sat down to lunch with a long time friend and tech CEO to talk about how his company had faired since the market soured a year ago. For the most part, he said, life was business as usual. Except for one thing: he had begun sleeping eight hours a night.

In most circles, that might not seem unusual. But in the dot-com world, lack of sleep has traditionally been seen as a badge of courage. This very friend, for example, often went for days sleeping only in quick power naps on a mattress kept under his desk, and was famous for the time that he fell asleep while walking down a hall. Dozing off mid-stride may seem a bit extreme, but more entrepreneurs than not have similarly bizarre sleep deprivation stories to tell. Intrigued by my friends somnolent confession, I spoke with several more. The consensus: most of the entrepreneurs I know are sleeping several hours a night more than they had been twelve months back. In the past, they admitted, they were stockpiling sleep options for that post-IPO vacation. But with company building once again a long-haul pursuit, they now wanted to pursue a more sensible and sustainable pace.

Certainly, well rested execs are a change in the right direction. After all, according to a recent study by the National Sleep Foundation, sleeping five hours a night (versus the recommended eight) actually decreases productivity by a full 43%. And with sleep deprivation a factor in 60% of car accidents, one has to wonder whether as many companies were dragged down by sleepless CEOs. But more interesting to me is whether this increased sleeping is indicative of a larger trend. With the dot-com rush petering out, has the actual pace of business life slowed down?

Consider the intriguing case of the Slow Food Movement. The Italian organization, symbolized by its distinctive snail mascot, works, according to its manifesto, towards ìa firm defense of quiet material pleasureÖ the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.î The group, which organizes local chapters across the world, has begun to take hold in the US, organizing vineyard tours, cheese tasting workshops and mushroom picking expeditions. Most tellingly, the largest US chapters of the organization have sprung up on entrepreneurshipís most hallowed grounds: Silicon Valley and New York City. More to the point, even the new economy rag Fast Company (a magazine boasting the tagline ìeverything fastî) ran a glowing feature piece on Slow Food. When the number one proponent of new economy fast begins to extol the virtues of old world slow, certainly major change is under foot.

The question, then, is where to go from here. Perhaps adding a midday siesta, taking Fridays off, and scaling back to bankerís hours? Certainly, none of those options seem particularly likely. Like it or not, the world of entrepreneurship is dominated by passionate, driven individuals who keep going for no other reason than theyíre having too much fun to stop. Because at the end of the day, even the most sleep deprived exec is craving the endorphins that come from a solid pitch, a closed sale or a good contact at a networking event. Perhaps what we can expect, then, is a bit of sensible moderation. While entrepreneurs may continue to work and play hard, it seems theyíve begun to understand when even they need to take a break.