When I left the confines of the college campus earlier this year, I thought my night owl days were numbered. I was entering a 9 to 5 world, and it didn’t seem like it’d be plausible to keep up my 3 AM bedtime.
Fast forward eight months and I’m sitting here in front of my computer at 3:00 AM, writing about how that didn’t turn out to be true at all.
While most of my friends need around 7 to 8 hours of sleep to be fully functional at work the next day, I function fine with 5 to 6 hours of sleep. In fact, sometimes I feel more tired when I sleep for 8 hours.
Since we all function differently, I thought it’d be fun to turn the tables and ask all of you about your sleeping habits. How many hours of sleep do you get? What happens when you get too little or too much sleep?
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Laura 09.09.08 at 5:11 am
I get 6-7 hours of sleep each day, but I think I need 8.
Jon 09.09.08 at 5:25 am
I used to get less sleep, because I didn’t seem all the tired. But I read a few too many articles about how sleep was important for other reasons besides feeling awake in the morning - specifically, for storing memories. So I figure it’s not worth the risk.
Twenties Money 09.09.08 at 6:15 am
I’m somewhere between 5 and 6 hours per night. I have far too many things to do to waste away sleeping. My sister in law on the other hand can and does sleep up to 12 hours a day. I just could not sleep half my life away like that.
Orange 09.09.08 at 6:24 am
I also do function pretty good on a 6 hour sleep, and usually I am awake before my alarm clock goes off. However sometimes I have days 10 hours of sleep is not enough:) I think my body gets exhausted without me knowing due to less sleep.
GoogleBot 09.09.08 at 6:54 am
I used to think that I was fine with 5-6 hours of sleep a day. Sure, I even felt more tired when I slept for 8 hours. But then I started getting 8 hours of sleep every day and I realized just how much of a zombie I was in the past. The moral of the story for me was that 1-2 days of getting 8 hours of sleep doesn’t show anything worth knowing. Try getting a couple of weeks’ worth of 8 hours a day sleep. It’s one of those things that may change your life
Prime Time Money 09.09.08 at 9:18 am
I definitely feel like I need more sleep. I go to bed between 12 and 2, and wakeup for work around 7 or 8. So, I’d say I average around 6 hours.
I usually feel miserable in the morning though.
Still, I hate letting the day go and can’t seem to get to bed early. I like GoogleBot’s suggestion of a two week mandatory trial. I probably need to do that.
Can’t we just all agree to make every day 26 hrs???
Caroline 09.09.08 at 12:20 pm
This is a really interesting subject. I’m in college right now, and in order to spend time with my friends, I usually have to stay up a lot later than I would otherwise. Ideally, I would go to sleep around 10 pm and wake around 8, which would give me about 10 hours of sleep a night. However, this is not possible because I stay up late to be with my friends and do my work, and then have to get up for early classes every morning. As a result, I always feel like I’m half-asleep and can’t pay attention to anything as much as I would like. I like the what the previous commenter said: let’s have 26-hour days!
Doctor S 09.09.08 at 1:22 pm
This really does vary, but on average I sleep around 1130PM after watching Jon Stewart and I wake up around 645AM. So that is about 7 hours of sleep. I think I need a good 6 hours to function properly and anything less I am a zombie at work. In college I used to sleep alot, I would take naps during the day and sleep in class as well. Many times when I get back from work I catch a nap, sometimes its 20 minutes and other times its 5 hours. If we could figure out how to have a longer day I would be all for it, but alas, we are on Earth. Great post!
SavingDiva 09.09.08 at 6:17 pm
I guess I’m the big sleeper of the group! I usually get about 9 hours of sleep a night. However, if I stay up late, I still get up at the same time (7 a.m.) in the morning….so if I stay up late, I pay the next morning!
Sam at Fix My Personal Finance 09.09.08 at 11:50 pm
I sleep around 12am and wake up around 6:30 am..so that’s 6 hours and 30 minutes of sleep. It’s been consistent the past 2 weeks. As my work place is almost 1 hour and 30 minutes away, I tend to continue my sleep when I’m in the bus*laughs*. So far no untoward incident at that.
In a very demanding world, I guess 6-8 is a norm. Not sure of its long term effect on my body though.
Craig 09.10.08 at 6:57 am
As a recent grad (07) myself, I agree with you that it’s hard to sleep as much. I normally wake up at 7:30, so to try to get enough sleep I’m usually in bed by 11:30-12:00. the issue is my body usually isn’t ready to go to bed at that time so I lie awake half the night stressing about having to get up the next day. It’s not like college where you had all the free time in the world to sleep/nap whenever you felt like it.
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Kelly Johnson 09.10.08 at 9:25 am
I’ve struggled with the sleep issue having an 8-5 job (I’m a few years out of college). I’ve always been a night person and no matter what it takes me a long time to get going in the moring, no matter how much sleep I get. I’m exhausted right after work and need to go home and rest, but then later in the night I’m never tired and feel like I could stay up all night, so I need to force myself to go to bed by 11 or so. I still sleep past noon on weekends too and am NOT willing to change this to ‘regulate’ my sleep schedule, as lots of advice says.
So, I’m resigned to being a hermit at work in the morning and relying on my coffee =)
Broke Grad Student 09.10.08 at 2:45 pm
26-hour days it is! Any ideas on who to contact to make this happen?
Uncommonadvice 09.13.08 at 1:21 am
I was going along fine with 5/6 hours until earlier this year. I don’t know what happened but now I can’t get out of bed for love nor money.
Twist 11.19.08 at 8:21 pm
I get 5-6 hours since Nov 9th 2008 though not by choice. I use to sleep for 9-10 hours for a 22 years on earth even as a kid I loved nap time.
Though I don’t feel to bad with the amount of sleep I get now but I would like to know as to why I cut my sleep in half….even if I stay up for 24 hours I still wake up around 5-6 hours.