Matthew Walker Masterclass Review: Worth It?

Sleep is such an important part of our lives – we spend one-third of it asleep! So why are we all taking this for granted without optimizing this time to get the best night’s sleep possible?  

Improving your sleep can be life-changing. It can boost your mood and ability to function, prevent illness, slow your aging processes down, and help you lose weight. 

This is what Matthew Walker aims to teach you in his Masterclass on sleep patterns and how to prevent sleep debt, along with how you can make the most of your nightly sleep. 

Today we will read the detailed Matthew Walker Masterclass review to determine whether it’s worth your time or not. 

What Is Masterclass? 

Masterclass is a platform that houses hundreds of classes and courses run by industry professionals. From actors to builders, musicians to scientists, Masterclass has it all. 

With flat annual rates beginning at $120, it can be a little expensive if you take just one course. However, with so many on the platform, you have plenty of other topics to explore in your yearly Masterclass subscription!

If you chose to take one Masterclass a month, each would be as low as $10 (including Matthew Walker’s Masterclass)!

Who Is Matthew Walker? 

Matthew Walker is a British professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California.

He is also a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and has published more than one hundred research studies on the effects of quality sleep on the brain and body function

He is also the author of Why We Sleep, a book that earned him a Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. It was also named Book of the Year by NPR and Business Insider in 2017. 

He has also completed a Ted Talk, which has amassed 12 million views since 2019. It is called Sleep Is Your Superpower, in case you want to watch it after our review. 

That’s quite a resume! 

His Masterclass is full of 20 years’ worth of research to teach you the science behind deep sleep and how it can affect both physical and mental health. 

Matthew Walker Masterclass Breakdown

Matthew Walker’s Masterclass is slightly shorter than the majority of other courses on the platform, coming in at just over three hours. This is made up of 15 lessons which range from 10 to 17 minutes long.

You also get a 24-page workbook to keep forever as a refreshed back to the course you took. This includes an overview of the course, links to other resources for further reading, Matthew’s top practical tips for good dream sleep, and much more. 

You’ll also get access to an online community of other students who have taken Matthew Walker’s course so that you can converse with them about what you learned. 

Lesson Summaries: What Will You Learn?

Let’s take a quick look at some of the course lessons to see what you’ll be learning from three hours with Matthew Walker. We won’t go into all of them – we don’t want to give too much away! 

1. Meet Matthew Walker

This is a quick lesson in which Matthew introduces us to the world of sleep, what it is, and why we need it. He tells us his goals for us throughout this course are: 

To learn when we can individually optimally time our sleep routine.

How sleep impacts our health and memory.

How sleep can slow down the aging process.

What dreams are and how we create them.

2. What Is Sleep?

The first real lesson of this Masterclass introduces us to the basics of sleep, including: 

The two types of sleep (REM and NREM),

How both of these types of sleep affect our bodies and minds,

How they both relate to one another,

What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?

Matthew is both passionate and motivating when he begins the course, making us excited for what lies ahead. He introduced us to plenty of scientific information but used simple language that was engaging. 

3. How Sleep Works

Matthew teaches how to understand your 24-hour body clock and how this can determine your brain function at different points in the day, what this does to your body, how your attributes will affect this, and more. 

Again, you’re getting a great balance of scientific knowledge here with relatable, fun language and animations to keep you engaged and understanding. We felt smarter just after the third lesson! 

4. Night Owl Or Morning Lark? 

Now we get into the business of chronotypes, aka whether you’re a morning or night person, and how the evolution of chronotypes begins. 

Chronotypes are genetic, and Matthew explains this in great detail. He also walks you through the six different ways (all outlined on page 7 of your workbook) to determine what chronotype you are. 

We used the Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire in the workbook to figure out this overnight therapy, and it even told us when we should go to bed and how long to stay there! 

What We Liked About Matthew Walker Masterclass

Matthew’s Credentials 

It is clear from the outset that Matthew Walker is knowledgeable on the subject that he is teaching, and that made us feel like we were in capable hands as we learned all about sleep quality. 

The fact that he has been focusing on the subject of sleep for over 20 years certainly helps! 

The scientific information was sometimes difficult to get our heads around, but Matthew used repetition, animations, and more to keep it engaging and easy to follow. 

Plenty Of Interesting Facts To Learn

We weren’t expecting to find so many mind-blowing facts in this class, and we were pleasantly surprised at how fun it was. We have taken some of the facts we learned and applied them to our lives. 

Consider your sleep game = improved! 

What Could Have Been Better

Lots Of Information Is Taken From Matthew’s Book

Plenty of information overlaps from Matthew’s book to this Masterclass course. The book is also cheaper than the subscription, so you might prefer to buy the book if you’re not bothered about Matthew’s helpful way of teaching. 

Theory/ Practice Balance Was Off

There is a lot of talk about the theory of science of better sleep in this Masterclass, which is fair when you consider what the course is about. However, we think that it would have been helpful if there were some more practical techniques discussed like how to control sleep deprivation. 

Practical techniques are only talked about in the second to last lesson, and we wanted to see them much earlier than this. By the time you reach this lesson, the massive amount of theory you learn begins to get a little overwhelming. 

Summary

Overall, we enjoyed the Matthew Walker Masterclass. We found it insightful, and informative, and Matthew’s way of teaching was fun and engaging. 

We learned plenty about how to change our sleeping habits and sleep schedule and why it was so essential for us to do so, and we are already feeling the effects of optimizing our sleep! 

The Masterclass isn’t perfect, and you can pick up Matthew Walker’s book for a cheaper way to learn most of the Masterclass knowledge. Still, you’re not getting the interactive method of teaching from a book.

We recommend this Masterclass to anyone who wants to change their life span through sleep.

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