Arianna Huffington: 'Sleep Deprivation Is the New Smoking'

Entrepreneurs worship hard work. The mantra of the most enthusiastic zealots is that working harder makes you both more respectable and more likely to succeed.

And at this Cathedral of Entrepreneurship, sleep is for the sad, unsalvaged souls who have no hope of achieving greatness.

And yet, one very prominent entrepreneur and media mogul, Arianna Huffington, is on a mission to change this ideology. Quite to the contrary, she wants to create a culture where sleep is revered, honored and held in the highest esteem. She recently published a book about the importance of sleep, The Sleep Revolution (Harmony, April 2016).

“I feel that sleep deprivation is the new smoking,” Huffington says during a video interview with Entrepreneur. In the same way that cigarette smoking used to be glamorized and celebrated, so too has sleep deprivation, she says. In addition to launching The Huffington Post, she is also the author of 15 books. She is the 70th most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes's most recent ranking.

And Huffington, now 65, would know. She spent much of her younger life believing that she could, if she pushed hard enough, do without sleep. The results were tragic.

To hear more, watch the video embedded above.