9 ms·

Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

286 points by pkarbe 16y ago

olliesaunders 16y ago
Damn you, science! I’ve read so many studies saying there’s absolutely no way you can get by without at least 7 hours sleep and now you tell me that that completely doesn’t apply to 1-3% of the population?! That’s actually not that small of a percentage. How big were the sample sizes of all the other studies? Did nobody encounter at least one of these low-sleep requiring people? Maybe they were just eliminated as being an anomaly. I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. This is fantastic research, I just wish it had been around 10 years ago.
- mc2k 16y ago
  I did 4-hour nights of sleep for a year, mainly because I didn't like my job, so was trying to maximise my time outside of work. It's possible, but you lose the ability to think properly without realising it, and in my case, every few months I got intense headaches that only stopped when I was in darkness - presumably a migraine? Anyway, I really don't recommend it.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world you'll never say anything useful at all. I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics. These people are on the far edge of the bell curve. The mean [1] is probably around 7-9 hours. But just because the far edge of the bell curve has very few samples in it doesn't mean that those samples don't exist, nor that someone is "hiding" them. Which reminds me: What this article does not talk about is the other side of the bell curve: The folks who need considerably more than 7-9 hours of sleep to attain peak performance and happiness. Or maybe those people don't exist, because the "bell curve" is actually a bimodal distribution, or cliff-shaped, or something. We could tell if there was any actual data here, or a link to the actual data and published science -- we could look at the shape of the distribution. But this is an article by a science journalist, so naturally it is nigh-useless. I wonder why the article doesn't talk about the "long sleepers"? Probably because the sleep researcher quoted herein is correct: There are more people who like to believe that they only need four hours' sleep than there are actual people who thrive on less sleep. And I'm sure that no Wall Street Journal wants to learn that they might really need twelve hours sleep. --- [1] I actually have no idea if the "7-9 hour" rule of thumb is based on a mean, a median, or a mode. Pity that nobody ever links to the original research.
  - jerf 16y ago
    I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to tell me about.
    - liedra 16y ago
      I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).
- mattmanser 16y ago
  The 1-3% at the top of the article doesn't actually tally up with the rest of what is said: Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do So just 5% of people who believe they're short sleepers. Do 50% of people believe they're short sleepers, as I've not met many. To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers So that 5% was based on just 20 people... That sounds a lot less than 1-3% to me. And then when you apply that context of such a small test group the article then also sounds like a lot of wild speculation. Will they burn out? Does it last forever?
silverbax88 16y ago
I think it's obvious what we must do next. According to every science fiction film or book I've ever read, we must capture them, confine them and study them in an attempt to learn their secrets and duplicate it in everyone else.
- pstack 16y ago
  Or, like every religious book, we could round them up and stone them to death. I could go with either option, so lead the way!
  - tintin 16y ago
    Name me one religious book with such strange behavior.
- jules 16y ago
  Luckily evolution is already doing the work for us.
  - matthavener 16y ago
    How would that work? Non-sleeper's children are more likely to survive?
    - jules 16y ago
      If not requiring a lot of sleep has an advantage in our society (which presumably it does) then all else being equal, a non-sleeper will produce more offspring. This is just evolution 101.
      - Psyonic 16y ago
        Just about the only advantage you need to reproduce these days is a willingness to do so.
        16y ago
codedivine 16y ago
The article is mostly content-free.
- waterhouse 16y ago
  To me, it gives the following data: that there are a significant number of people who can sleep short hours, that there's at least one identifiable genetic factor that might possibly cause it in a couple of cases, and that there are researchers working on this (and soliciting information from "short sleepers"). It fails to deliver on its subtitle: "Why".
keyle 16y ago
Lucky buggers. Technically since time is money, that could make them 16% richer than most of us (assuming they sleep 2 hours less).
- gmac 16y ago
  In fact, probably more, since they also accumulate and compound valuable experience that much more quickly!
  - eru 16y ago
    Probably less. Since most people have a day job, and work something like 8 hours a day, no matter what. Staying up longer just increases the time you spent spending money and consuming stuff. Sleep is a cheap entertainment.
    - khkwang 16y ago
      You're assuming that everyone spends all of their waking life either working a day job or spending money/consuming stuff?
      - eru 16y ago
        No. But it's a factor to take into account.
Roritharr 16y ago
As someone whose blanket feels like its made out of lead every morning after 7 hours sleep i have to say: unfair. :(
- danparsonson 16y ago
  Indeed - envy, thy name is a longer day without suffering sleep deprivation
- Fargren 16y ago
  If you don't feel rested after 7 hours you probably should make an effort to sleep an extra hours. You will be more productive and happy in 16 hours after a good sleep, than in 17 sleep-deprived hours.
pstack 16y ago
No sleep is a feat I could pull off regularly when I was younger. It was no problem to go 48-72 hours without more than just a catnap or two. That was a decade ago. In my early thirties, I struggle beyond the sixteenth hour, except for rare occasions. Fortunately, I think it's a sort of bell curve. From what I understand, I'm only about fifteen or twenty years away only getting a couple hours of sleep per night. How productive sleepless nights full of trips to the bathroom will be, I have no idea. I guess I'll finally catch up on all that damn reading.
ComputerGuru 16y ago
Hmmm.. Something I would think I could relate to, but we all know (a) how easy it is to convince yourself/diagnose yourself with something, and (b) how we would all love to consider ourselves from this group. So I'll just let this make me smile a little and leave it that :)
dvfer 16y ago
If they cannot find any "actual" short sleepers, how do they it's 1-3% of population...Oh science you are scary...
- al05 16y ago
  Assuming they work those hours. I spend the spare hours when I can't sleep watching films.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  They do find short sleepers. They mention that the studies have them -- they're just not easy to find.
mbateman 16y ago
I've always wondered if this was mostly a psychological issue. There are two circumstances in which I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night: if I'm really stressed about getting something done, or if I'm really excited about getting something done. In the first place the lack of sleep exacerbates the stress and really starts to weigh on me. But in the second case it doesn't seem to have much negative effect. Now if only I could continuously keep my motivation up...
Tycho 16y ago
Is this few-hours sleep business feasible when you need to think deeply about abstract things during the day, eg. programming? I can see it working if your success is tied to being energetic, on the ball, constantly negotiating, acting on information or leading lots of people. But what if you need to do the analysis yourself?
- adeaver 16y ago
  I've been writing code for over 10 years and have been functioning on between 4 and 6 hours of sleep a night and have been quite successful. Not saying I'm one of the 'elite' either just my personal experience.
- brandall10 16y ago
  In my case I've had this issue (advantage?) since childhood, where I vacillate between both states in 2 week blocks - 2 weeks at a time where I'll get 7-8 hours, and 2 weeks where I get approx half as much. In the latter case I simply don't get naturally tired. But it does eventually catch up to me, and then all of a sudden - bam!, I'm tired one night and naturally fall asleep say at 10pm every night. What I've found is with the poor sleep cycles I tend to be more energetic and get to solutions quicker. If the problem requires deep thinking, I can focus on the problem at hand much better, but at the same time I can make many superficial mistakes. The best I can say is it's a bit like being in a minor psychedelic state all the time, where the creative pathways of my mind are more open with a manic desire to latch onto something interesting. It also exacerbates my Asperger's-like condition. OTOH, if I am in the design process and building a piece a software that requires high conceptual integrity getting more sleep is certainly beneficial.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
lkozma 16y ago
It's a false dichotomy, on a lot of hard problems progress is a step function, and you often "get much done" while sleeping. I.e. when you wake up well rested you see things from a different angle. If it's something like chopping wood, sure, the less you sleep the more wood you chop, within reasonable limits, but I don't think that is what these articles aim for. I think it's wrong to look at sleep as a waste of time the same way time spent thinking about something is not wasted either. Here's some information I mostly agree with: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
- mzl 16y ago
  I think that you are missing the fact that short-sleepers wake up well-rested, even though their sleep-time is much shorter and would not suffice to give us normals enough rest. I'm not sure if there has been any actual studies that show that longer sleep-times given ad-libitum sleeping is more effective in helping the brain process more information during the sleep phase.
  - lkozma 16y ago
    You are right, I'm not aware of any such study either. What I meant is just that there is no need to feel guilty for whatever amount of sleep feels right, regardless of what society says in the name of efficiency and productivity. It's ok to enjoy sleeping.
    - mzl 16y ago
      I fully agree with that. I love to sleep, and like my 8 hours of sleep per night.
mzl 16y ago
I used to know one of these short sleepers. He had never felt the need to sleep more than about two hours per night, and did so for his whole life (which was respectably long, no noticeable side-effects from the exceptionally short sleep). He used a lot of the extra time to run a small local business, interact with customers during the day and do the administration during the night.
nhangen 16y ago
Jon Gruden, former NFL coach and Monday Night Football analyst is one of these. He goes to bed late and gets up as early as 3-4 AM.
bound008 16y ago
I emailed the researcher, whose address was at the end of the article with the appropriate gene data (BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12) to see if my DNA is a match. The article said its a mutation, but maybe those with the mutation exhibit a certain codon pair. Its an amazing time when you can read an article about such a thing, and then cross check your DNA in a matter of seconds. Articles will have to start posting the raw DNA for results.
- AgentConundrum 16y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why do you have your genetic makeup readily available for cross checking?
  - pathik 16y ago
    23AndMe, I guess.
    - AgentConundrum 16y ago
      I had never heard of that before. Interesting site/service, but I really don't see me ever using it.
  - joahua 16y ago
    Adding to this, what are the potential ramifications of having accessed this data in terms of seeking health/life/other insurance? It seems a range of these services give insight into risk factors that I imagine insurers might not look favourably upon (given they're typically not able to do such screening themselves)...
  - bound008 16y ago
    yeah, 23 and me.... no response yet...
- alex_c 16y ago
  This comment blows my mind much more than the article itself.
- deleted 16y ago
jasongullickson 16y ago
I'm glad that I finally have something (albeit thin) to point people to when they feel the need to lecture me about my sleeping habits. As long as I can remember I've been happy with a mix of 4 and 6 hour sleeping sessions, two or three days of 4 followed by one night of more sleep (typically 6 hours) and then back to 4 hours again. Under the recommendation of my peers and physicians I have attempted to do 8 hour nights but the results are that I feel worse in the morning, and each night I attempt to sleep 8 hours waking up gets harder and harder. Over the years I've developed a few theories as to why I need less sleep than is recommended and someday when I get around to finishing my EEG project I'll gather some data to back them up, but for now I'm just making the most out of the extra time I have the same way someone with a different biological advantage might. I will also mention that (as mentioned elsewhere here) there are definitely people at the other end of this curve who's performance is shockingly better if they get more than the "required" 8 hours of sleep per night, and I believe that we could all benefit by recognizing this fact and adjusting our cultural expectations to accommodate these patterns as well. I think with a little flexibility on both ends we'd see a significant increase in overall productivity and quality of life. In other words "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." - http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/whentired.html http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/whentired.html
- Homunculiheaded 16y ago
  I've had a similar experience, since I hit my teenage years I rarely sleep more than just a few hours a night. At that time I would typically sleep 3-4 hours a night, and then really crash on the weekends. But as I got older I needed less and less weekend sleep. Whenever I try to go to bed earlier or sleep in to get close to 8 hours (even for extended periods of time) I find that I'm just as tired, if not more so than if I had gotten less sleep. The only thing that I've found does make a difference is a short nap in the middle of the day, I find 1/2 hour in the day can easily make up for several hours at night. But that's where the cultural problem is, I've had office jobs where I could get away with taking a nap, but it would still be frowned upon, which is always a bit sad since it make it clear that many offices cultures would prefer the illusion of busy-ness over actual increased production.
paylesworth 16y ago
Leave it to the WSJ to exemplify the behavior of people with an erratic gene variation as something "Elite" (or L33t, lol).
Swizec 16y ago
Not saying that I'm one of the sleepless elite, but I seem to function best on 6 hours of sleep a day. Whenever I try to sleep more I just feel tired all day and when I sleep less ... well that depends on how much less. For optimum energivity I find an hour of sleep is best, just enough to reset your cycle. But you can't do this more than once at a time, the next day the whole 6 hours are needed. Don't have any idea why I'm like this, but I'm told that even as a baby I would often lie in bed for hours before finally falling asleep and as a toddler I would wake up at 5am because I was put to bed so early. Nowadays a healthy 4am to 10am schedule seems best. Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying reasons.
- lordlarm 16y ago
  Please, enlighten us, which reasons caused you to stop meditating?
  - Swizec 16y ago
    Mostly just falling out of the habit. Getting a girlfriend meant that I could no longer meditate every night (it feels weird with people watching) and as holes appeared in my schedule they eventually grew until I stopped completely.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying reasons. OK, I'll match your anecdote with one of my own. I meditate 40 minutes per day, and it hasn't shaved a minute off of my sleep time. I average 8 hours of sleep per night, substantially more on the weekends when I can get it.
  - 16y ago
Tharkun 16y ago
I have to admit that I'm a bit confused here. 7-9 hours seems to be the "normal recommended" range, and under 6 hours puts you in the short sleepers category. What does 6-7 make you? Irrelevant to the research? Many people make the mistake of oversleeping on the weekend and undersleeping on working days. I try to average 6.5hrs every night, weekend or no weekend. Just being consistent really helps in keeping the energy levels up imo.
shawnee_ 16y ago
Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says. The article didn't mention this, but the ability to wake up regularly without an alarm clock is probably another commonality short sleepers have. Although < 7 hours isn't something I can do regularly, I can't stay in bed, even if I'm a little tired, much past 6 AM on any day of the week. "People need less sleep as they get older" is something I've heard a lot, but don't know. Sleep patterns seem pretty ingrained, and people with weird sleeping patterns tend to be either hardcore early birds (me) or unapologetic night owls.
soapdog 16y ago
red bull?
- soapdog 16y ago
  it was a joke :-(
michaelcampbell 16y ago
This reminds me of the studies not too long about how some very small percentage of the population actually CAN multitask well. Then a very large percentage of the population used that as "evidence" to justify their existing habits. I see it here already.
- kls 16y ago
  It may be that the subject peaks the interest of those of us that experience a shorter sleep cycle and therefore it draws more comments from that minority. I have what I call insomnia but what I experience parallels the article. I don't know that I am a short-sleeper but I sleep 2-4 a night and if I get 4 I seem to be fine. It is hard for me to sleep. That being said, I suck at multitasking so if and article comes up about multitasking it does not raise my interest.
- jergason 16y ago
  Do you have a link to these studies? I looked around a bit and only found the ones claiming multitasking doesn't work.
  - michaelcampbell 16y ago
    That's what I was referring to. Did I misunderstand you? http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-resear...
Vivtek 16y ago
Candidate number two for gene surgery (my current #1 being that color vision y'all talk about so much).
- eru 16y ago
  There's no colour vision. They just make it up as they go along. It's just a huge conspiracy / April fools' joke.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    My family seems not only convinc{ed|ing} but consistent in their delusion.
- Sherlock 16y ago
  Those are two genes that I'd love to have too, but in the reverse order.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Well, the only reason they're in this order is that the color vision thing will actually be going into clinical trials in the next couple of years. THAT is the 21st century I signed up for!
- jarin 16y ago
  Could you maybe get some kind of approximation of color by holding up different colored filters in front of your eyes to filter out all but that color? It works for space probes :)
- bioh42_2 16y ago
  Oh I'll gladly trade color vision for this. Rainbows are overrated.
kls 16y ago
There has been a link to depression and too much sleep so much so that sleep deprivation is used as a treatment for depression where other treatments fail. It actually puts the patient into a manic episode. It was peculiar to note that people who are short-sleepers also share a slight manic trait in their personality. While the article makes short-sleep cycles out to look like all sunshine and roses it is not all it is cracked up to be. I get between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night and on a good night I get 6. I have to monitor the sleep I am getting because if I allow myself to fall into a cycle of 2 hours for an extended time I start to have problems with my heart and abnormal rhythms. If the > 4 hours cycle goes on for more than a week I have to start taking medicine to sleep to ensure that my body is receiving an adequate amount of sleep. I see no negative effects if I get 4-6 a night, but it is probably safe to assume that short-sleep cycles rides the line between good and bad health. I never considered myself a short sleeper I just figured I have insomnia but never worried too much about it because I feel no different if I get 4 or 8 hours of sleep a night (if I can get 8) and the fact that my father and grandfather shares the trait and are healthy (grandfather is almost 90) . On the plus side, I experience more life and get more done which are really the only benefits to sleeping less.
- GrangalanJr 16y ago
  I have used total sleep deprivation to kick myself out of persistent low mood. So far it has worked every time. Not a method to use too often, of course.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    Would you mind elaborating on this? That usually throws me into a very bad mood.
    - killerdark 16y ago
      I sometimes do it too. If I consistently sleep for about 4 hours max for 3 or 4 days, my mood will start improving. If I then take a mild stimulant like caffeine (or music with a high BPM) I reach a state that is close to euphoria, lasting several hours. My guess is that there is some genetics involved.It's never been hard for me to become manic for a short period of time.
Herwig 16y ago
A majority of us here are wanna be short sleepers. And we make do with that
palguay 16y ago
This is a talk given at google about sleep http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI
aycangulez 16y ago
The primary function of sleep is to permanently store the things learned during the day (long-term potentiation). Although different people need different amounts of sleep, those who need less usually find that they sleep longer if they learn challenging new material (e.g. a new language). That is the reason why babies sleep the most. Their brains are empty sponges constantly absorbing new information.
gwern 16y ago
> Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
maxcho 16y ago
Read the actual paper, take a look at the hypomania test: figure out things about yourself. http://cl.ly/313A0x2k011t400C3N3C http://cl.ly/313A0x2k011t400C3N3C
mironathetin 16y ago
I am 46 now and I still need more than 8 hours a night. I tried less, but that does not work: thinking is a torture then, sports too. If I get enough sleep, I feel great, I get 3 times as much done and I run and swim like a champ (still). I love to get enough sleep!!!! It simply feels great.
kenjackson 16y ago
I think I could sleep 20 hours if given the chance, but I routinely will sleep until 7am regardless of when I go to bed. If its 10pm or 4am. I just wake up at 7am, I'm super sleepy still, but more hungry. So I have to wake up, make some cereal and then I'm up. Not sure what that is, but I've never met anyone else who shares this trait.
doki_pen 16y ago
I used to need very little sleep. Unfortunately, it was because my thyroid was overactive. As soon as I went to a doctor and got it taken care of, I became a normal sleeper.
jcl 16y ago
Given that the trait is genetic and extremely advantageous, why doesn't a much larger portion of the population have it? Is there a significant downside?
- aerique 16y ago
  Maybe no downside in these modern times but perhaps back when we still lived in caves and only had fire and a full moon now and then to light our ways I can imagine them short sleepers to be quite bored out of their skulls.
alexhektor 16y ago
Arianna Huffington (and me) certainly are no natural "short sleepers" :) http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_get_more_sleep.html http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_g...
tokenadult 16y ago
"A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. 'These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life,' says Dr. Buysse." Reduction in sleep is a known symptom of abnormally elevated mood, whether hypomania (elevated mood without psychotic symptoms) or mania (elevated mood with psychotic symptoms). For most normal subjects, as has been demonstrated by studies of unusual sleep patterns in armed forces personnel, reduced hours of sleep or disrupted daily sleep cycles seriously degrade performance of many tasks involving judgment or multitasking--without the subject of the experiment being aware of the degraded performance. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania Note that controlled reduction of sleep has been shown experimentally to elevate the mood of depressed persons. In other words, if a person has had a prolonged period of depressed mood, and begins reducing hours of sleep (especially if a light box turns on to help the person wake up on time in the morning), that can bring the person closer to normal mood. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression Following up on the interesting comment posted first by mechanical_fish, there surely is a range of variation of "natural" human need for sleep, with most people concentrated in a band of needing approximately seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and some few needing significantly less, and some few needing significantly more. But social pressure and environmental conditions for sleep induction (electric lights in the evening) in current society probably result in most people getting less sleep than what they need to perform at their best when awake and to maintain good health.
megaframe 16y ago
I question how much "work" someone that fits this really gets accomplished. I can run on limited sleep for weeks at a time and am more energized, but throw me at something mentally challenging like Quantum Physics or Solving some Linear Systems model, and it's like my brain says it needs time to process everything, so I end up sleeping absurd amounts. (I also find I make significant headway the next day after that kind of sleep)
semerda 16y ago
I sleep 2am to 7am most days and keep myself busy so much that I sometimes go to 3:30am before forcing myself to sleep. Sleep time happens within 3-5 mins after going to bed - according to my WakeMate. I think alot of this is due to a busy lifestyle. I find myself doing multiple things at the same time in the evening and being very productive in getting stuff done. While on holidays where I actually disconnect from work I find I sleep long hours each day. An afternoon 20 min powernap is an amazing recharge! Everyone should do it. Using Paul McKenna's audio helps with the powernap. There's something weird about the hypnotic audio. Instantly puts me to sleep. Finally, supposedly the need to nap in the afternoon is normal and every animal in the kingdom does it. Humans has largely forgotten about this clock due to the "working culture". In the book Brain Rules, this is described in more detail: http://www.brainrules.net/sleep http://www.brainrules.net/sleep My 2c's worth.
daimyoyo 16y ago
I think the level of sleep I need depends on what I'm working on. When I was working on a business with my friends, I'd only sleep for 4 hours or so a day. Whereas when I was working a job I hated, I was exhausted unless I slept 9-10 hours a night. I think sleep requirements are a function of brain activity and engagement. It's just a theory but it seems to be true, at least in my case. Another theory I have relates to the sleep schedules of people. I'm nocturnal. I have been since I was 8 years old. And when I was working with my friends, it was at night. So I wonder if nite people need more sleep to function during the day like morning people need more to work nights?
Semiapies 16y ago
My boss is exactly like this - sleeps a tiny bit, has ridiculous amounts of energy and enthusiasm, and loves to deal with the world in a flurry of stimuli and decisions. Me, I'm just an insomniac.
gamblndano 16y ago
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gamblndano 16y ago
Check out my new app coming to the App Store. It's called MultiSnooze. It's the ultimate alarm clock app. It allows you to press the snooze button multiple times as soon as you determine that you are going to be pressing it more than once anyway. Now you don't have to keep waking up. Roll over and sleep peacefully with MultiSnooze. multisnooze.com for details. Thanks for looking.

286 points by pkarbe 16y ago

Damn you, science! I’ve read so many studies saying there’s absolutely no way you can get by without at least 7 hours sleep and now you tell me that that completely doesn’t apply to 1-3% of the population?! That’s actually not that small of a percentage. How big were the sample sizes of all the other studies? Did nobody encounter at least one of these low-sleep requiring people? Maybe they were just eliminated as being an anomaly. I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. This is fantastic research, I just wish it had been around 10 years ago.

mc2k 16y ago
I did 4-hour nights of sleep for a year, mainly because I didn't like my job, so was trying to maximise my time outside of work. It's possible, but you lose the ability to think properly without realising it, and in my case, every few months I got intense headaches that only stopped when I was in darkness - presumably a migraine? Anyway, I really don't recommend it.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world you'll never say anything useful at all. I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics. These people are on the far edge of the bell curve. The mean [1] is probably around 7-9 hours. But just because the far edge of the bell curve has very few samples in it doesn't mean that those samples don't exist, nor that someone is "hiding" them. Which reminds me: What this article does not talk about is the other side of the bell curve: The folks who need considerably more than 7-9 hours of sleep to attain peak performance and happiness. Or maybe those people don't exist, because the "bell curve" is actually a bimodal distribution, or cliff-shaped, or something. We could tell if there was any actual data here, or a link to the actual data and published science -- we could look at the shape of the distribution. But this is an article by a science journalist, so naturally it is nigh-useless. I wonder why the article doesn't talk about the "long sleepers"? Probably because the sleep researcher quoted herein is correct: There are more people who like to believe that they only need four hours' sleep than there are actual people who thrive on less sleep. And I'm sure that no Wall Street Journal wants to learn that they might really need twelve hours sleep. --- [1] I actually have no idea if the "7-9 hour" rule of thumb is based on a mean, a median, or a mode. Pity that nobody ever links to the original research.
- jerf 16y ago
  I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to tell me about.
  - liedra 16y ago
    I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).
mattmanser 16y ago
The 1-3% at the top of the article doesn't actually tally up with the rest of what is said: Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do So just 5% of people who believe they're short sleepers. Do 50% of people believe they're short sleepers, as I've not met many. To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers So that 5% was based on just 20 people... That sounds a lot less than 1-3% to me. And then when you apply that context of such a small test group the article then also sounds like a lot of wild speculation. Will they burn out? Does it last forever?

silverbax88 16y ago

I think it's obvious what we must do next. According to every science fiction film or book I've ever read, we must capture them, confine them and study them in an attempt to learn their secrets and duplicate it in everyone else.

pstack 16y ago
Or, like every religious book, we could round them up and stone them to death. I could go with either option, so lead the way!
- tintin 16y ago
  Name me one religious book with such strange behavior.
jules 16y ago
Luckily evolution is already doing the work for us.
- matthavener 16y ago
  How would that work? Non-sleeper's children are more likely to survive?
  - jules 16y ago
    If not requiring a lot of sleep has an advantage in our society (which presumably it does) then all else being equal, a non-sleeper will produce more offspring. This is just evolution 101.
    - Psyonic 16y ago
      Just about the only advantage you need to reproduce these days is a willingness to do so.
      - 16y ago

codedivine 16y ago

The article is mostly content-free.

waterhouse 16y ago
To me, it gives the following data: that there are a significant number of people who can sleep short hours, that there's at least one identifiable genetic factor that might possibly cause it in a couple of cases, and that there are researchers working on this (and soliciting information from "short sleepers"). It fails to deliver on its subtitle: "Why".

keyle 16y ago

Lucky buggers. Technically since time is money, that could make them 16% richer than most of us (assuming they sleep 2 hours less).

gmac 16y ago
In fact, probably more, since they also accumulate and compound valuable experience that much more quickly!
- eru 16y ago
  Probably less. Since most people have a day job, and work something like 8 hours a day, no matter what. Staying up longer just increases the time you spent spending money and consuming stuff. Sleep is a cheap entertainment.
  - khkwang 16y ago
    You're assuming that everyone spends all of their waking life either working a day job or spending money/consuming stuff?
    - eru 16y ago
      No. But it's a factor to take into account.

Roritharr 16y ago

As someone whose blanket feels like its made out of lead every morning after 7 hours sleep i have to say: unfair. :(

danparsonson 16y ago
Indeed - envy, thy name is a longer day without suffering sleep deprivation
Fargren 16y ago
If you don't feel rested after 7 hours you probably should make an effort to sleep an extra hours. You will be more productive and happy in 16 hours after a good sleep, than in 17 sleep-deprived hours.

pstack 16y ago

No sleep is a feat I could pull off regularly when I was younger. It was no problem to go 48-72 hours without more than just a catnap or two. That was a decade ago. In my early thirties, I struggle beyond the sixteenth hour, except for rare occasions. Fortunately, I think it's a sort of bell curve. From what I understand, I'm only about fifteen or twenty years away only getting a couple hours of sleep per night. How productive sleepless nights full of trips to the bathroom will be, I have no idea. I guess I'll finally catch up on all that damn reading.

ComputerGuru 16y ago

Hmmm.. Something I would think I could relate to, but we all know (a) how easy it is to convince yourself/diagnose yourself with something, and (b) how we would all love to consider ourselves from this group. So I'll just let this make me smile a little and leave it that :)

dvfer 16y ago

If they cannot find any "actual" short sleepers, how do they it's 1-3% of population...Oh science you are scary...

al05 16y ago
Assuming they work those hours. I spend the spare hours when I can't sleep watching films.
kenjackson 16y ago
They do find short sleepers. They mention that the studies have them -- they're just not easy to find.

mbateman 16y ago

I've always wondered if this was mostly a psychological issue. There are two circumstances in which I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night: if I'm really stressed about getting something done, or if I'm really excited about getting something done. In the first place the lack of sleep exacerbates the stress and really starts to weigh on me. But in the second case it doesn't seem to have much negative effect. Now if only I could continuously keep my motivation up...

Tycho 16y ago

Is this few-hours sleep business feasible when you need to think deeply about abstract things during the day, eg. programming? I can see it working if your success is tied to being energetic, on the ball, constantly negotiating, acting on information or leading lots of people. But what if you need to do the analysis yourself?

adeaver 16y ago
I've been writing code for over 10 years and have been functioning on between 4 and 6 hours of sleep a night and have been quite successful. Not saying I'm one of the 'elite' either just my personal experience.
brandall10 16y ago
In my case I've had this issue (advantage?) since childhood, where I vacillate between both states in 2 week blocks - 2 weeks at a time where I'll get 7-8 hours, and 2 weeks where I get approx half as much. In the latter case I simply don't get naturally tired. But it does eventually catch up to me, and then all of a sudden - bam!, I'm tired one night and naturally fall asleep say at 10pm every night. What I've found is with the poor sleep cycles I tend to be more energetic and get to solutions quicker. If the problem requires deep thinking, I can focus on the problem at hand much better, but at the same time I can make many superficial mistakes. The best I can say is it's a bit like being in a minor psychedelic state all the time, where the creative pathways of my mind are more open with a manic desire to latch onto something interesting. It also exacerbates my Asperger's-like condition. OTOH, if I am in the design process and building a piece a software that requires high conceptual integrity getting more sleep is certainly beneficial.
deleted 16y ago
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lkozma 16y ago

It's a false dichotomy, on a lot of hard problems progress is a step function, and you often "get much done" while sleeping. I.e. when you wake up well rested you see things from a different angle. If it's something like chopping wood, sure, the less you sleep the more wood you chop, within reasonable limits, but I don't think that is what these articles aim for. I think it's wrong to look at sleep as a waste of time the same way time spent thinking about something is not wasted either. Here's some information I mostly agree with: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm

mzl 16y ago
I think that you are missing the fact that short-sleepers wake up well-rested, even though their sleep-time is much shorter and would not suffice to give us normals enough rest. I'm not sure if there has been any actual studies that show that longer sleep-times given ad-libitum sleeping is more effective in helping the brain process more information during the sleep phase.
- lkozma 16y ago
  You are right, I'm not aware of any such study either. What I meant is just that there is no need to feel guilty for whatever amount of sleep feels right, regardless of what society says in the name of efficiency and productivity. It's ok to enjoy sleeping.
  - mzl 16y ago
    I fully agree with that. I love to sleep, and like my 8 hours of sleep per night.

mzl 16y ago

I used to know one of these short sleepers. He had never felt the need to sleep more than about two hours per night, and did so for his whole life (which was respectably long, no noticeable side-effects from the exceptionally short sleep). He used a lot of the extra time to run a small local business, interact with customers during the day and do the administration during the night.

nhangen 16y ago

Jon Gruden, former NFL coach and Monday Night Football analyst is one of these. He goes to bed late and gets up as early as 3-4 AM.

bound008 16y ago

I emailed the researcher, whose address was at the end of the article with the appropriate gene data (BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12) to see if my DNA is a match. The article said its a mutation, but maybe those with the mutation exhibit a certain codon pair. Its an amazing time when you can read an article about such a thing, and then cross check your DNA in a matter of seconds. Articles will have to start posting the raw DNA for results.

AgentConundrum 16y ago
Just out of curiosity, why do you have your genetic makeup readily available for cross checking?
- pathik 16y ago
  23AndMe, I guess.
  - AgentConundrum 16y ago
    I had never heard of that before. Interesting site/service, but I really don't see me ever using it.
- joahua 16y ago
  Adding to this, what are the potential ramifications of having accessed this data in terms of seeking health/life/other insurance? It seems a range of these services give insight into risk factors that I imagine insurers might not look favourably upon (given they're typically not able to do such screening themselves)...
- bound008 16y ago
  yeah, 23 and me.... no response yet...
alex_c 16y ago
This comment blows my mind much more than the article itself.
deleted 16y ago

jasongullickson 16y ago

I'm glad that I finally have something (albeit thin) to point people to when they feel the need to lecture me about my sleeping habits. As long as I can remember I've been happy with a mix of 4 and 6 hour sleeping sessions, two or three days of 4 followed by one night of more sleep (typically 6 hours) and then back to 4 hours again. Under the recommendation of my peers and physicians I have attempted to do 8 hour nights but the results are that I feel worse in the morning, and each night I attempt to sleep 8 hours waking up gets harder and harder. Over the years I've developed a few theories as to why I need less sleep than is recommended and someday when I get around to finishing my EEG project I'll gather some data to back them up, but for now I'm just making the most out of the extra time I have the same way someone with a different biological advantage might. I will also mention that (as mentioned elsewhere here) there are definitely people at the other end of this curve who's performance is shockingly better if they get more than the "required" 8 hours of sleep per night, and I believe that we could all benefit by recognizing this fact and adjusting our cultural expectations to accommodate these patterns as well. I think with a little flexibility on both ends we'd see a significant increase in overall productivity and quality of life. In other words "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." - http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/whentired.html http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/whentired.html

Homunculiheaded 16y ago
I've had a similar experience, since I hit my teenage years I rarely sleep more than just a few hours a night. At that time I would typically sleep 3-4 hours a night, and then really crash on the weekends. But as I got older I needed less and less weekend sleep. Whenever I try to go to bed earlier or sleep in to get close to 8 hours (even for extended periods of time) I find that I'm just as tired, if not more so than if I had gotten less sleep. The only thing that I've found does make a difference is a short nap in the middle of the day, I find 1/2 hour in the day can easily make up for several hours at night. But that's where the cultural problem is, I've had office jobs where I could get away with taking a nap, but it would still be frowned upon, which is always a bit sad since it make it clear that many offices cultures would prefer the illusion of busy-ness over actual increased production.

paylesworth 16y ago

Leave it to the WSJ to exemplify the behavior of people with an erratic gene variation as something "Elite" (or L33t, lol).

Swizec 16y ago

Not saying that I'm one of the sleepless elite, but I seem to function best on 6 hours of sleep a day. Whenever I try to sleep more I just feel tired all day and when I sleep less ... well that depends on how much less. For optimum energivity I find an hour of sleep is best, just enough to reset your cycle. But you can't do this more than once at a time, the next day the whole 6 hours are needed. Don't have any idea why I'm like this, but I'm told that even as a baby I would often lie in bed for hours before finally falling asleep and as a toddler I would wake up at 5am because I was put to bed so early. Nowadays a healthy 4am to 10am schedule seems best. Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying reasons.

lordlarm 16y ago
Please, enlighten us, which reasons caused you to stop meditating?
- Swizec 16y ago
  Mostly just falling out of the habit. Getting a girlfriend meant that I could no longer meditate every night (it feels weird with people watching) and as holes appeared in my schedule they eventually grew until I stopped completely.
michael_dorfman 16y ago
Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying reasons. OK, I'll match your anecdote with one of my own. I meditate 40 minutes per day, and it hasn't shaved a minute off of my sleep time. I average 8 hours of sleep per night, substantially more on the weekends when I can get it.
- 16y ago

Tharkun 16y ago

I have to admit that I'm a bit confused here. 7-9 hours seems to be the "normal recommended" range, and under 6 hours puts you in the short sleepers category. What does 6-7 make you? Irrelevant to the research? Many people make the mistake of oversleeping on the weekend and undersleeping on working days. I try to average 6.5hrs every night, weekend or no weekend. Just being consistent really helps in keeping the energy levels up imo.

shawnee_ 16y ago

Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says. The article didn't mention this, but the ability to wake up regularly without an alarm clock is probably another commonality short sleepers have. Although < 7 hours isn't something I can do regularly, I can't stay in bed, even if I'm a little tired, much past 6 AM on any day of the week. "People need less sleep as they get older" is something I've heard a lot, but don't know. Sleep patterns seem pretty ingrained, and people with weird sleeping patterns tend to be either hardcore early birds (me) or unapologetic night owls.

soapdog 16y ago

red bull?

soapdog 16y ago
it was a joke :-(

michaelcampbell 16y ago

This reminds me of the studies not too long about how some very small percentage of the population actually CAN multitask well. Then a very large percentage of the population used that as "evidence" to justify their existing habits. I see it here already.

kls 16y ago
It may be that the subject peaks the interest of those of us that experience a shorter sleep cycle and therefore it draws more comments from that minority. I have what I call insomnia but what I experience parallels the article. I don't know that I am a short-sleeper but I sleep 2-4 a night and if I get 4 I seem to be fine. It is hard for me to sleep. That being said, I suck at multitasking so if and article comes up about multitasking it does not raise my interest.
jergason 16y ago
Do you have a link to these studies? I looked around a bit and only found the ones claiming multitasking doesn't work.
- michaelcampbell 16y ago
  That's what I was referring to. Did I misunderstand you? http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-resear...

Vivtek 16y ago

Candidate number two for gene surgery (my current #1 being that color vision y'all talk about so much).

eru 16y ago
There's no colour vision. They just make it up as they go along. It's just a huge conspiracy / April fools' joke.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  My family seems not only convinc{ed|ing} but consistent in their delusion.
Sherlock 16y ago
Those are two genes that I'd love to have too, but in the reverse order.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Well, the only reason they're in this order is that the color vision thing will actually be going into clinical trials in the next couple of years. THAT is the 21st century I signed up for!
jarin 16y ago
Could you maybe get some kind of approximation of color by holding up different colored filters in front of your eyes to filter out all but that color? It works for space probes :)
bioh42_2 16y ago
Oh I'll gladly trade color vision for this. Rainbows are overrated.

kls 16y ago

There has been a link to depression and too much sleep so much so that sleep deprivation is used as a treatment for depression where other treatments fail. It actually puts the patient into a manic episode. It was peculiar to note that people who are short-sleepers also share a slight manic trait in their personality. While the article makes short-sleep cycles out to look like all sunshine and roses it is not all it is cracked up to be. I get between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night and on a good night I get 6. I have to monitor the sleep I am getting because if I allow myself to fall into a cycle of 2 hours for an extended time I start to have problems with my heart and abnormal rhythms. If the > 4 hours cycle goes on for more than a week I have to start taking medicine to sleep to ensure that my body is receiving an adequate amount of sleep. I see no negative effects if I get 4-6 a night, but it is probably safe to assume that short-sleep cycles rides the line between good and bad health. I never considered myself a short sleeper I just figured I have insomnia but never worried too much about it because I feel no different if I get 4 or 8 hours of sleep a night (if I can get 8) and the fact that my father and grandfather shares the trait and are healthy (grandfather is almost 90) . On the plus side, I experience more life and get more done which are really the only benefits to sleeping less.

GrangalanJr 16y ago
I have used total sleep deprivation to kick myself out of persistent low mood. So far it has worked every time. Not a method to use too often, of course.
- ebiester 16y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on this? That usually throws me into a very bad mood.
  - killerdark 16y ago
    I sometimes do it too. If I consistently sleep for about 4 hours max for 3 or 4 days, my mood will start improving. If I then take a mild stimulant like caffeine (or music with a high BPM) I reach a state that is close to euphoria, lasting several hours. My guess is that there is some genetics involved.It's never been hard for me to become manic for a short period of time.

Herwig 16y ago

A majority of us here are wanna be short sleepers. And we make do with that

palguay 16y ago

This is a talk given at google about sleep http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI

aycangulez 16y ago

The primary function of sleep is to permanently store the things learned during the day (long-term potentiation). Although different people need different amounts of sleep, those who need less usually find that they sleep longer if they learn challenging new material (e.g. a new language). That is the reason why babies sleep the most. Their brains are empty sponges constantly absorbing new information.

gwern 16y ago

> Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

deleted 16y ago

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maxcho 16y ago

Read the actual paper, take a look at the hypomania test: figure out things about yourself. http://cl.ly/313A0x2k011t400C3N3C http://cl.ly/313A0x2k011t400C3N3C

mironathetin 16y ago

I am 46 now and I still need more than 8 hours a night. I tried less, but that does not work: thinking is a torture then, sports too. If I get enough sleep, I feel great, I get 3 times as much done and I run and swim like a champ (still). I love to get enough sleep!!!! It simply feels great.

kenjackson 16y ago

I think I could sleep 20 hours if given the chance, but I routinely will sleep until 7am regardless of when I go to bed. If its 10pm or 4am. I just wake up at 7am, I'm super sleepy still, but more hungry. So I have to wake up, make some cereal and then I'm up. Not sure what that is, but I've never met anyone else who shares this trait.

doki_pen 16y ago

I used to need very little sleep. Unfortunately, it was because my thyroid was overactive. As soon as I went to a doctor and got it taken care of, I became a normal sleeper.

jcl 16y ago

Given that the trait is genetic and extremely advantageous, why doesn't a much larger portion of the population have it? Is there a significant downside?

aerique 16y ago
Maybe no downside in these modern times but perhaps back when we still lived in caves and only had fire and a full moon now and then to light our ways I can imagine them short sleepers to be quite bored out of their skulls.

alexhektor 16y ago

Arianna Huffington (and me) certainly are no natural "short sleepers" :) http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_get_more_sleep.html http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_g...

tokenadult 16y ago

"A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. 'These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life,' says Dr. Buysse." Reduction in sleep is a known symptom of abnormally elevated mood, whether hypomania (elevated mood without psychotic symptoms) or mania (elevated mood with psychotic symptoms). For most normal subjects, as has been demonstrated by studies of unusual sleep patterns in armed forces personnel, reduced hours of sleep or disrupted daily sleep cycles seriously degrade performance of many tasks involving judgment or multitasking--without the subject of the experiment being aware of the degraded performance. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania Note that controlled reduction of sleep has been shown experimentally to elevate the mood of depressed persons. In other words, if a person has had a prolonged period of depressed mood, and begins reducing hours of sleep (especially if a light box turns on to help the person wake up on time in the morning), that can bring the person closer to normal mood. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression Following up on the interesting comment posted first by mechanical_fish, there surely is a range of variation of "natural" human need for sleep, with most people concentrated in a band of needing approximately seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and some few needing significantly less, and some few needing significantly more. But social pressure and environmental conditions for sleep induction (electric lights in the evening) in current society probably result in most people getting less sleep than what they need to perform at their best when awake and to maintain good health.

megaframe 16y ago

I question how much "work" someone that fits this really gets accomplished. I can run on limited sleep for weeks at a time and am more energized, but throw me at something mentally challenging like Quantum Physics or Solving some Linear Systems model, and it's like my brain says it needs time to process everything, so I end up sleeping absurd amounts. (I also find I make significant headway the next day after that kind of sleep)

semerda 16y ago

I sleep 2am to 7am most days and keep myself busy so much that I sometimes go to 3:30am before forcing myself to sleep. Sleep time happens within 3-5 mins after going to bed - according to my WakeMate. I think alot of this is due to a busy lifestyle. I find myself doing multiple things at the same time in the evening and being very productive in getting stuff done. While on holidays where I actually disconnect from work I find I sleep long hours each day. An afternoon 20 min powernap is an amazing recharge! Everyone should do it. Using Paul McKenna's audio helps with the powernap. There's something weird about the hypnotic audio. Instantly puts me to sleep. Finally, supposedly the need to nap in the afternoon is normal and every animal in the kingdom does it. Humans has largely forgotten about this clock due to the "working culture". In the book Brain Rules, this is described in more detail: http://www.brainrules.net/sleep http://www.brainrules.net/sleep My 2c's worth.

daimyoyo 16y ago

I think the level of sleep I need depends on what I'm working on. When I was working on a business with my friends, I'd only sleep for 4 hours or so a day. Whereas when I was working a job I hated, I was exhausted unless I slept 9-10 hours a night. I think sleep requirements are a function of brain activity and engagement. It's just a theory but it seems to be true, at least in my case. Another theory I have relates to the sleep schedules of people. I'm nocturnal. I have been since I was 8 years old. And when I was working with my friends, it was at night. So I wonder if nite people need more sleep to function during the day like morning people need more to work nights?

Semiapies 16y ago

My boss is exactly like this - sleeps a tiny bit, has ridiculous amounts of energy and enthusiasm, and loves to deal with the world in a flurry of stimuli and decisions. Me, I'm just an insomniac.

gamblndano 16y ago

Check out my new app coming to the App Store. It's called MultiSnooze. It's the ultimate alarm clock app. It allows you to press the snooze button multiple times as soon as you determine that you are going to be pressing it more than once anyway. Now you don't have to keep waking up. Roll over and sleep peacefully with MultiSnooze. multisnooze.com for details. Thanks for looking.

gamblndano 16y ago