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Poll: How many hours of sleep do you get each day?

19 points by eru ↗ HN
After having experimented with polyphasic sleep in the past I am back to normal. I would like how many hours of sleep you actually get each day. For example I need (and usually get) around 9 to 10 hours of sleep each day, while my fiancée seems to be fine on 7,5 hours.

36 comments

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cperciva
I get as many hours of sleep as I need. I don't try to keep to any particular schedule: When I'm tired, I go to sleep; and when I'm not tired any more, I wake up. Some days I sleep 5 hours; some days I sleep 11 hours; some days I sleep for two or more multiple-hour periods. I probably average about 8-9 hours.

Occasionally I need to be awake at a specified time (e.g., every Thursday evening, for rehearsals of an orchestra I'm playing with), but this very rarely interferes with my sleep non-schedule.

wheels
Same here. I tend to average 5-6 hours most "nights". When I'm working a normal job I tend to manage by sleeping 6 times a week since that was easier for me to keep going schedule-wise than a 7-day week. Now with the startup I sleep a bit less -- not because I have to be up so much as I just wake up after 4-5 hours most of the time with the always-long list of to-dos going through my head. About once a month I'll hit a phase where I'm a little burnt out and sleep for 8-10 hours for three or four days in a row.
Freaky
Same here. I do find it a bit awkward, though; my cycles tend to rotate around the day, like my body thinks a day should be 26 hours or so. Can lead to missing a lot of sunlight, which isn't always very pleasant.

Still, on the bright side there's only 480 million years to go before the moon slows the Earth's rotation enough to get back into sync with me.

tocomment
5 hours on weeknights, 12 on weekends, average 7/night, neat.
eru
I used to sleep like this back in high school.
biohacker42
I envy anyone who can consistently get more then 6 hrs a night.
blender
7 to 8, but rarely straight through (I have kids)
kamme
I can get around with 5h/night but it depends. if I can get more (in weekends), I sleep more (about 9-10h). But I don't seem to really need it...
vaksel
On weekdays I go to bed at 2 and wake up at 7. On the weekends I usually go to bed at 2 and wake up at 11. You just need to get into a routine.
hapless
You asked what we get, not what we need. Much of the industrialized world lives with too little sleep.

I need eight to ten hours to function well. Perverse lifestyle choices have put me in a position in which I get three to four hours.

eru
Yes, I asked what you get. The other question might make for a nice poll, too.
henning
When I was a teenager, I thought it was cool to stay up for 36+ hours at a time. When I started doing more serious programming work, I realized you couldn't do careful, quality software development without a solid night's sleep.

If you get less sleep than you need, you're robbing yourself.

llopis
7.5 is the ideal for me. I do a lot of running and cycling though, which make me need more sleep. When I don't, I'm fine with 6 hours.

I also experimented with polyphasic sleep and it was too much of a pain as far as coordinating a schedule with the rest of the world.

What I did take out of it was that it was very important for me to sleep in multiples of 1.5 hours. So if I'm not feeling very tired, I'll go from 7.5 hours to 6 hours, but never to 6.5 or 8.

Best thing, I don't even need an alarm anymore. I just wake up naturally, which is great.

icey
I've noticed the 1.5 hour interval thing as well; and also switch between a 6 hour sleep schedule and a 7.5 hour sleep schedule, depending on when I actually get tired.
rtf
It depends on how early I go to bed. When I turn in later I wake up later.
truebosko
10:30-11:00 bed time, 6:25 am wake up so roughly around 7 hours. My internal clock is so sharp now that I generally wake up 5 min before my alarm.

Even on off days I generally won't sleep past 7am. I'd rather be up early these days then stay up late. Sometimes the mornings are awesome for working

cstejerean
I recently got in a similar cycle by accident. I was up all night on Saturday then when I tried to take a nap at 6pm on Sunday I ended up sleeping until 6:30am Monday. I've been enjoying waking up at 6:30 every weekday since then and it's working out great. I get to do all the things I usually wanted to do in the evening but never got around to (like hit the gym).
mhartl
I recall reading an article about Max Levchin where he said he started another company (Slide, after selling PayPal to eBay) because he could spend time with his dog and fiancée for maybe 3 hours a day, but what was he going to do with the other 18 hours he's awake? I remember thinking, OK, 24 - (3 + 18) = 3 hours of sleep a night. That's amazing; I wouldn't last a week on that schedule.

I often get the sense from hyperproductive people like Max and his PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel that they think sleep is for the weak; anyone who sleeps 8-10 hours a night must have a serious lack of will. (I don't know if they actually think this; it's just my impression.) And yet, as far as I can tell, all research in the area suggests that the amount of sleep you need is biologically determined. Might it be that the ranks of the super-rich and super-successful are disproportionately filled by those genetically endowed with less need for sleep?

baddox
Sleep isn't for the weak, it's for the weekend!
omarish
i read that article too and loved it; my favorite is the ordering: dog and fiancee. priorities are set.
mhartl
She's his wife now. I wonder if the order has changed. (Probably not. :-)
LPTS
"I sleep 8 hours a day. And at least 10 at night." - Bill Hicks

Sleep is good.

nickb
OT: Now that Carlin's dead, all my fav comedians are dead... Hicks, Carlin, Hedberg... all dead :( Only Chris Rock is still spreading the laughter.

As to sleep, I wish I could sleep more. I can only get 5-6 hrs a day :(

pavelludiq
Depends on when i go to sleep, i usually wake up in 8:00 AM, but some times i go to sleep between midnight and 3:00 am.
utnick
1-2 hour nap when I get home from 5-7, then I go to sleep at midnight and sleep till 7 usually
mdakin
My interval tends towards [3,9]. Mean is likely around 6 and it's a lumpy distribution with significant variance. I've not actually characterized it; this is gut-feel.
_b8r0
I sleep betwee 5-7 hours a night during the week and try to get 10-12 on weekends. Normally I'll have one 5 hour night and mostly 6-7 hours. I also find that quality of sleep is far more important than the time (I can sleep for 8 hours after a night out on the town and be really knackered even if I'm not slightly hung over).
schtog
If I work more than around 8 hours per day I don't get more productive. And for me work==pleasure. It's just that I've been sitting up all night long a lot of times not getting anywhere and then gone to sleep and the next morning I'm like "wow what the hell was I thinking last night?".
speek
Am I the only one who wakes up at a weird time (read: non-multiple of 5) every day? I wake up at 7:01am every morning... it just felt right one day, and now I keep on doing it.

BTW, I go to bed by 11pm every evening. For those of you non-math folks, that's 8 hours and a penny.

qeek
I suffer from delayed sleep phase syndrome, which means I usually get around 3-5 hours of sleep while I need at least 8 to function properly. And I often fail to get up at a desired time.

Too bad there is no quick remedy for this.

habibur
Age is a big factor. It would have been excellent if there was a way to build a matrix of hours of sleep required with age.