The Secret Superpower Advisors Are Not Using: Dr. Melissa Milanak on Sleep, Stress, and Sustainable Success

Sleep is the secret superpower that most high performers have access to and very few are actually using. Dr. Melissa Milanak, PhD, has spent decades working with trauma survivors, professional athletes, and corporate executives, and her work keeps pointing to the same conclusion: quality sleep is the foundation everything else is built on, and most high performers are quietly undermining it every single day.

In Episode 22 of Gray to Great, host Dan Dal Degan sits down with the clinical psychologist, executive consultant, and founder of MIND Impact Consulting for one of the most unexpectedly practical conversations in the podcast’s history. The conversation covers the anxiety advantage and where it becomes a liability, what sleep deprivation does to decision-making and client relationships in ways advisors may not even notice, why most of what people do to improve their sleep is actually making it worse, and a concept called planned neglect that reframes how high performers think about control, burnout, and recovery.

The Badge of Honor That Is Working Against You

In financial services, being tired has long been treated as a signal of dedication. If you were the first one in and the last one to leave, exhaustion became an indicator that you were committed. Melissa challenges that framing directly. Research shows that financial advisors experience significantly more stress and anxiety than the typical workforce, and the belief that sleep deprivation is a productivity tool is one of the most damaging misconceptions in the industry.

The reality is straightforward. When you are not sleeping well, you make more errors, you cannot be fully present, and your ability to focus and connect with clients suffers. Melissa puts it plainly: “just because you are physically there does not always mean you can mentally show up the way you want to.”

When Stress Is Useful and When It Is Not

Not all anxiety is created equal. Melissa makes an important distinction between productive stress, the kind that sharpens focus, catches errors, and drives performance, and chronic low-grade anxiety that quietly erodes decision-making quality over time. The problem for high achievers is that early career success can reinforce a dangerous pattern: feeling stressed led to catching that mistake, so now staying stressed feels necessary. That reinforcement loop is where productive anxiety becomes a liability.

For retirement plan advisors specifically, where marginal errors can be expensive and client relationships depend on presence and trust, understanding that distinction is not optional. It is foundational.

What You Think Is Helping Your Sleep Is Probably Making It Worse

This is where Melissa’s expertise is most immediately actionable. Several of the most common sleep habits people rely on are actively working against them.

Catching up on sleep on weekends does not work the way most people think. It takes four days to recover from one hour of lost sleep. A two-day weekend barely scratches the surface. Inconsistent schedules, sleeping late on weekends and early on weekdays, confuse the body’s internal clock and make quality sleep harder to achieve throughout the week.

Going to bed early after a bad night is similarly counterproductive. When bedtime varies, the body does not know when to feel tired, which leads to more daytime fatigue and fragmented sleep over time.

Using your bed for anything other than sleep and rest trains the brain to associate the bed with wakefulness. Reading, watching television, scrolling through email in bed all create that association. When you cannot sleep in the middle of the night, getting out of bed until you feel tired again is more effective than lying there trying to will yourself back to sleep.

Technology and the Brain Before Bed

The phone on the nightstand is one of the most common and most damaging sleep disruptors Melissa sees in her practice. The core issue is light. The eyes perceive light and send signals to the brain that determine wakefulness and sleep readiness. Screens keep the brain activated at exactly the time it needs to begin winding down.

Beyond light, the content matters. Checking email before bed starts the planning process. Scrolling social media triggers dopamine responses that pull the brain further from rest. Melissa recommends switching devices to night mode with a black background and white text, setting timers on apps, and putting technology down entirely 10 to 15 minutes before bed. In its place, she suggests writing a to-do list for the next day on paper. Getting those tasks out of the brain and onto the page gives the mind permission to stop rehearsing them.

Racing Thoughts at 2 AM

For advisors managing client relationships and running small businesses, middle-of-the-night waking is not uncommon. Melissa explains why: the brain spends the day in constant motion, so sleep becomes the window it uses to process what the day did not allow time for.

Her framework is practical. Journaling before bed reduces the mental backlog the brain needs to address overnight. When a 2 AM awakening does occur, getting out of bed and writing down whatever is running through the mind teaches the brain that the bed is not the place for that work. Cognitive shuffling and progressive muscle relaxation are two additional evidence-based tools that interrupt the cycle and signal the body that it is safe to rest.

Planned Neglect and the Path Forward

Burnout is not a character flaw. For high-performing advisors, it is what happens when the demands on time and energy consistently outpace the capacity to recover. And according to Melissa, poor sleep is both a symptom and a driver of that cycle. When advisors are not sleeping well, the ability to manage stress, make clear decisions, and show up fully for clients erodes quietly over time, often before they notice it themselves.

The practical starting point is what Melissa calls planned neglect: deliberately deciding what does not have to happen today and reclaiming a sense of agency over where energy goes. Combined with the sleep strategies covered throughout this conversation, from consistent wake times and a technology-free wind-down routine to journaling before bed and getting out of bed when sleep will not come, the path to better performance does not require more hours in the day. It requires using the hours already available more intentionally, starting with the ones spent asleep.

More About Dr. Melissa Milanak

Dr. Melissa Milanak, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, executive consultant, and keynote speaker specializing in helping professionals sleep better, stress less, and perform at their best. She is the founder of MIND Impact Consulting, where she translates decades of research and clinical expertise in anxiety, sleep disorders, stress, and trauma into practical strategies for business executives and their organizations. Dr. Milanak earned her PhD in clinical and community psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and maintains an active academic career as an Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Dr. Melissa Milanak and MIND Impact Consulting are not affiliated with or endorsed by Great Gray Trust Company, LLC.

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