> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://sharperdaily.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # REM Sleep Is Doing More Work Than You Think - URL: https://sharperdaily.com/rem-sleep-is-doing-more-work-than-you-think/ - Published: 2026-09-21T12:06:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-21T12:06:56.000Z - Author: Kendall Kelly - Tags: "monday" SharperDaily | ![SharperDaily](https://mcusercontent.com/1d689948ed30d6a2a41271ff9/images/a246dcd2-5b0e-1024-eb06-7ff8475417de.png) TODAY'S EDGE Most people wait for conditions to improve before they start working well. The conditions rarely improve first. What changes is the person's tolerance for waiting. I have been guilty of this more than once, which is exactly why I feel qualified to say it. THE FOXHOLE Five days, five different lenses. Monday is work. Tuesday is how you think. Wednesday is how you show up. Thursday is your money. Friday sends you into the weekend with something worth chewing on. None of it is mandatory. Take what fits, leave the rest, and come back tomorrow. THE BRIEF In the News [Trump's China Pivot Is Now Official](https://apnews.com/article/trump-xi-china-relationship-ai-tariffs-iran-2716ee31afa579e9ca18ae76cbe35ab9?ref=sharperdaily.com) The president who built a political career on China-as-villain is now rolling out the red carpet for Xi Jinping. The shift reflects the pressure of simultaneous fronts: an Iran war, shaky bond markets, and AI competition that needs Chinese cooperation more than confrontation. Allies in the Pacific who built defense postures around U.S. resolve on China now face a quieter recalibration than the one anyone announced. In Health [REM Sleep Protects Against 83 Diseases](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/more-dream-sleep-linked-to-lower-risk-of-83-diseases-including-diabetes?ref=sharperdaily.com) The amount of time you spend in REM sleep, not just total sleep hours, is independently linked to lower risk across more than 80 diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and several cancers. Total sleep time gets all the public health messaging, but the architecture of sleep, how you move through its stages, turns out to matter as much as the duration. For the large share of people using alcohol, late screens, or sleep aids to fall asleep faster, the tradeoff may be compressing the very stage that does the most protective work. In Business [Refineries Are the New Bottleneck](https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/refineries-are-now-the-main-chokepoint-for-global-energy-supplies-f923e1ba?ref=sharperdaily.com) Two wars have exposed a structural problem nobody fixed. The Iran and Ukraine conflicts have squeezed the world's refinery capacity, especially for diesel, revealing that raw supply of oil is no longer the critical variable. Companies with long-haul freight exposure and manufacturing supply chains are pricing in something the broader equity market has been slow to absorb: the cost of fuel is less about wellheads now and more about the handful of processing facilities left to convert it. ![meme](https://mcusercontent.com/1d689948ed30d6a2a41271ff9/images/26c90db0-4469-493b-977e-aa7349505b64.gif) WORK SHARPER Stop Explaining What You're About to Say There is a habit that makes smart people sound uncertain even when they are not: narrating what you are about to say before you say it. "I just wanted to share some thoughts on..." or "I think what I'm trying to get at is..." are not warm-ups. They are apologies for taking up space, and they train the room to discount you before you have finished. Most people who do this think it sounds collaborative or careful. It sounds like hedging. It creates a gap between you and your own point, which is the one thing a listener will walk through if given the chance. The fix is not confidence as a personality trait. It is a structural one. Lead with the claim, then support it. In the next meeting where you are about to say "I think what I'd suggest is maybe exploring whether we could..." stop at "I think" and restart: "We should do X, because Y." The sentence gets shorter. The room gets quieter. Both are improvements. Try it today: In your next email or meeting, delete every sentence that describes what you are about to say. Start with the point. WORK TIP Confirm the Decision, Not Just the Meeting Every meeting produces conversation. Fewer produce a documented decision. Most people skip the follow-up because the outcome felt obvious in the room. Send one sentence after any meeting where something was decided: "We agreed to X. Sarah owns it. Done by Friday." That is the whole email. Skip it and the decision exists only in memory, which is the least reliable place to store anything that costs someone else time. ![meme](https://mcusercontent.com/1d689948ed30d6a2a41271ff9/images/5160dda6-fa0f-d0dd-498c-b399cdbd22cd.gif) QUICK HITS **READ —** [Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar Over Webb Telescope's 'Little Red Dots.'](https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-holes-or-black-hole-stars-astronomers-spar-over-webb-telescopes-little-red-dots-20260914/?ref=sharperdaily.com) in Quanta Magazine. The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding mysterious bright objects that may be stars hundreds of times larger than our sun, and nobody agrees on what they are. ![meme](https://mcusercontent.com/1d689948ed30d6a2a41271ff9/images/a7cfa77f-4583-d167-49da-e7256ca2f6d8.gif) **STAT —** The average medieval European contract for building a stone bridge specified a completion date of seven to ten years, yet most took between twenty and fifty years to finish, with the original contractor rarely alive to see it done. **QUOTE —** “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.” — Charles Kettering \[inventor and head of research at General Motors\] ![Anthony](https://mcusercontent.com/1d689948ed30d6a2a41271ff9/images/c7e5dad6-3c8c-e8e2-ec77-aade129e45dc.png)Stay Sharp, Anthony Tell me what landed and what didn't. Write me at [feedback@sharperdaily.com](mailto:feedback@sharperdaily.com). [SharperDaily.com](https://sharperdaily.com/) SharperDaily is a free daily eletter from [OneBlade, Inc](http://www.onebladeshave.com/?ref=sharperdaily.com) — makers of the Original Luxury Razor. 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