Time is money, and aside from health, time is also our greatest asset.
I'm what experts call a "long sleeper". I sleep 9 or 10 hours per day. If I get 7 hours of sleep instead, I can wake up and go about my day, but at some point lethargy will kick in and I will become unproductive and exhausted. If I get the extra 2 - 3 hours, I feel like new again. I can fight thru it but I'll likely sleep longer the following day as a result. Somehow, the body needs to get its preset amount of sleep.
The amount of sleep that you need is genetically determined and I hate that my sleep requirements have put me at a disadvantage. While I don't have to do it anymore, in the past I negated this disadvantage by using my waking hours efficiently, but I also believe that if I only required 5 hours of sleep per day, I would get more accomplished.
People who are short-sleepers, and successful, have a hard time understanding long sleepers and sometimes mistakenly believe they're lazy. Nobody has control over the hours they need to sleep to feel rested and suffer no debilitating health problems (this is differentiated from insomnia - people going on little sleep and feel tired all the time). You can't will yourself to sleep less no matter how much you want to, and become a short sleeper. You can try different diets, adjust sleep patterns, exercise, take certain nutrients. None of it changes the amount of sleep you need. Doesn't matter how motivated you are, your biology dictates rest and recovery time. You can drink coffee to keep you alert and awake longer, but you'll still need to get your catch-up sleep eventually.
Short sleepers get their 4 or 5 hours of sleep per day and wake up feeling like a million bucks (sidenote: there was one or two weeks in my life when I automatically would wake up each day with only about 5 hours of sleep and had all the energy in the world; this must be what it's like to be a short sleeper; I could not replicate this no matter how much I tried). We live in a fast paced society so getting little sleep is seen as being a go-getter and a positive attribute, and is required for many jobs.
Short sleepers possess a rare gene mutation called DEC2, and when mice are bred with the same gene mutation, they sleep less but perform cognitive and physical functions just like regular mice (ref https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884988/ ). Short sleepers won an important genetic lottery.
Successful people fall into both categories. Einstein was a long sleeper requiring 10 hours/day, Mariah Carey claims to need 15 hours/day, meanwhile CEOs like Trump, Jack Dorsey (of Twitter), and Martha Stewart need only 4 - 6 hours/day. Many people don't have sleep issues but their expectation of how much sleep they need doesn't align with how much they need.
But back to basic math - imagine needing 5 hours of sleep/day instead of 10 hours/day. Every 5 days, you have lived over a full 24 hour day awake more than the person who needs 10 hours of sleep/day. In a year, you've had 73 full 24 hour days awake to get more stuff done than the person who needs more sleep. Thus, I think short sleepers get more out of life and have a incalculable competitive advantage over those that need more sleep to achieve success. Therefore, if you're a short sleeper and a failure, you have failed extra hard.
They say that the average person needs 8 hours of sleep. I don't know if this is the actual average or median. Anyway, even for many top functioning successful folks it does seem that they need 6 - 8 hours.
I'm what experts call a "long sleeper". I sleep 9 or 10 hours per day. If I get 7 hours of sleep instead, I can wake up and go about my day, but at some point lethargy will kick in and I will become unproductive and exhausted. If I get the extra 2 - 3 hours, I feel like new again. I can fight thru it but I'll likely sleep longer the following day as a result. Somehow, the body needs to get its preset amount of sleep.
The amount of sleep that you need is genetically determined and I hate that my sleep requirements have put me at a disadvantage. While I don't have to do it anymore, in the past I negated this disadvantage by using my waking hours efficiently, but I also believe that if I only required 5 hours of sleep per day, I would get more accomplished.
People who are short-sleepers, and successful, have a hard time understanding long sleepers and sometimes mistakenly believe they're lazy. Nobody has control over the hours they need to sleep to feel rested and suffer no debilitating health problems (this is differentiated from insomnia - people going on little sleep and feel tired all the time). You can't will yourself to sleep less no matter how much you want to, and become a short sleeper. You can try different diets, adjust sleep patterns, exercise, take certain nutrients. None of it changes the amount of sleep you need. Doesn't matter how motivated you are, your biology dictates rest and recovery time. You can drink coffee to keep you alert and awake longer, but you'll still need to get your catch-up sleep eventually.
Short sleepers get their 4 or 5 hours of sleep per day and wake up feeling like a million bucks (sidenote: there was one or two weeks in my life when I automatically would wake up each day with only about 5 hours of sleep and had all the energy in the world; this must be what it's like to be a short sleeper; I could not replicate this no matter how much I tried). We live in a fast paced society so getting little sleep is seen as being a go-getter and a positive attribute, and is required for many jobs.
Short sleepers possess a rare gene mutation called DEC2, and when mice are bred with the same gene mutation, they sleep less but perform cognitive and physical functions just like regular mice (ref https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884988/ ). Short sleepers won an important genetic lottery.
Successful people fall into both categories. Einstein was a long sleeper requiring 10 hours/day, Mariah Carey claims to need 15 hours/day, meanwhile CEOs like Trump, Jack Dorsey (of Twitter), and Martha Stewart need only 4 - 6 hours/day. Many people don't have sleep issues but their expectation of how much sleep they need doesn't align with how much they need.
But back to basic math - imagine needing 5 hours of sleep/day instead of 10 hours/day. Every 5 days, you have lived over a full 24 hour day awake more than the person who needs 10 hours of sleep/day. In a year, you've had 73 full 24 hour days awake to get more stuff done than the person who needs more sleep. Thus, I think short sleepers get more out of life and have a incalculable competitive advantage over those that need more sleep to achieve success. Therefore, if you're a short sleeper and a failure, you have failed extra hard.
They say that the average person needs 8 hours of sleep. I don't know if this is the actual average or median. Anyway, even for many top functioning successful folks it does seem that they need 6 - 8 hours.
