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Comment by alfiedotwtf | Hacker News Reader

For me anyway, I find that there's little link between the two. I sleep on average 4.5 hours and (I don't think) it has effected in any way my mental health.

The biggest thing for me that completely changes my mood (not world caving in type, but noticable), is amounting external presures like obligation, deadlines, etc - the inescapable. I've learned to minimise these in my life, much to my happiness.

YMMV

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That is easily explained by the theory that is us not just the amount of the sleep that counts, but rather the quality.

I can wake up after 5 hours of sleep and be completely refreshed. I can also wake up after 8 hours of bad disrupted sleep due to various reasons and feel like a trainwreck the entire day. Including most symptoms in the article, especially if that happens a couple of nights in row: first and foremost the anger (well, mainly the amount of effort it takes to suppress that is killing me) but also the 'wrong' trains of thought, seeing flashes of things which aren't there etc.

All of which can then again be rest by 5 (or more) hours of proper sleep.

Quality of sleep is definitely a big factor, but genetics also govern how much sleep an individual needs. Some people just naturally need less sleep than others. Personally, I've found that if I allow myself to sleep and wake whenever I want, I eventually settle to a stable state of 8.5 hrs sleep/night. However, I typically get less than 8.5 hrs/night on weekdays and sleep in on weekends. After keeping track of my sleep, I found that on average, I was still sleeping 8.5 hrs/night every week, and I would sleep in just enough on weekends to hit my quota.

I think you'd need at least three consistent days of sleep before you could even begin to assess what is your normal amount.

Isn't that some sort of biological rule? You couldn't settle into a normal pattern in just one day since all the previous days poor sleep would still be affecting you.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that this was over a period of two months. I settled to 8.5 hrs, on the dot, but with a shift of sleeping a bit later every day.

Problem is when you are sleep you have a hard time judging the quality of the sleep you are getting. I usually find I need want 8 hours of sleep, it's because I am not getting quality sleep.

It seems like every time I meet someone who claims they need less than 6 hours of sleep, they are either notably sleep deprived, or they exclude the fact they sleep longer on the weekend and don't bother counting all the random naps.

If anyone knows of a credible resource and testimonials of a program that lets a person go from 7-8 hours of sleep to 4-5 hours please share a link. In every other domain of human ability you can usually train for improvement and I am skeptical that sleep can't be one. This assumes people aren't reporting bad data or secretly taking Provigil.

I've also found this to be the case, I used to sleep 3 hours per night, take an hour nap afterwards, and on weekends I'd sleep 12 hours or so per night. My averages sleep per week was 55 hours, or about 8 hours per day. It all evened out on a weekly basis, although I don't think sleep is supposed to work that way...

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