Ask HN: How many hours do you sleep on average? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many hours do you sleep on average?

43 pointsmrburton55 comments

Mon-Fri - Up by 8 am EST and asleep by 3 am to 3:30 am the following day Sat-Sun - Up by 11 am EST and asleep by 1:00 am the following day.

My schedule looks like this by choice. During the day, I'm a software consultant, and by night I'm working on my product. I know, it doesn't sound as cool as me saying "superhero by night."

I find it hard to sleep when I have something that needs to get done, outstanding questions, or worse.. when I'm just "that close" to having something completed that brings my ideas to life.

What is your schedule like and what keeps you up at night?

P.S., I don't buy into the idea if you don't share my schedule, you're not working hard.

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Just to counteract the crazy low amounts of sleep people are reporting here - I sleep at least 8 hours on weekdays, and 9 or more hours on weekends (up to 11 if I didn't sleep enough on weekdays). I can't do less than that and remain productive for more than a few days.

After much experimenting I've found much less than 6.5/7 hours a night and I'm definitely not at 100%. Similarly, much more than 8 and I'm not at 100% either. One offs are fine, but I try and stick to this as much as possible.

I try and exercise every day - I'm not sure whether that equates to me needing more or less sleep, but again, without the exercise I never feel I'm at 100%. Meditation also helps me greatly.

This definitely hasn't always been the case - I'm late 30s. In my 20s, less sleep (or working after drinking, etc) was very much doable. Or maybe I just care more / notice it more.

OP, I'm all for getting stuff done, I appreciate we're all (very!) different, and definitely I'm not trying to mother you(!), but just keep an eye on yourself and your health. Burnout creeps up quickly. Have been there more than once and it's miserable.

~8.5 hours.

Most of my life I did the typical not getting enough sleep and then binging on the weekend, which doesn't work well at all. Since reading "Why We Sleep"[0] though, I've changed my lifestyle to prioritize getting quality sleep every single night. That book was pretty eye-opening in obliterating a lot of myths I believed about sleep and then teaching my how complex and important it is, indeed it is just as important as waking time if not more. The idea that time spent asleep is "wasted time" is now absurd to me, as so many bad things happen when you short sleep.

Since getting quality sleep regularly it's been like unlocking a superpower: retaining more information, better progress with strength training and skill-based hobbies, more solid emotional balance and way more motivation / inspiration at work.

Can't recommend that book enough.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

I feel with 8 hours, I don't get enough. I seem to need 8 hours and 40 minutes or so. On the weekends, I'm tempted to sleep almost 9 hours. But, I set limits on the time I sleep. Doing so, helps he fall assleep faster the next day.

I had a hard time understanding your post. So, for the sake of clarity:

Between 3 and 3:30 am to 8am on Weekdays

1:00 am to 11:00 am on weekends

Personally, I have started tracking my sleep time using an app called "Sleep by Android". And I aim to sleep at least 7.5 hrs each day. This normally equates to 10.30-11pm to 6.30 am.

Earlier I used to feel compelled to be up late and doing something - sometimes even reading HN because I missed reading posts due to a busy day. That meant I had an irregular sleep schedule. Normally sleeping between 12-3am and waking up by 7-9am.

Now I have started doing mindfulness and learning to let things go. There's always another day. It has been hard but I have managed to stick to my schedule.

I'm 29 and childless; I average ~8 hours of sleep per night and take 15-30 min. nap 2-3 times a week.

I run fairly seriously and get sick quickly if I sleep less than this.

I'm 64. Kids are grown.

Most days, in bed by 9 and up by about 4 am. So 7 hours. Sometimes a little more. Usually get up an hour early and go to the living room and sleep in a chair for the last hour.

I have some back issues and use an adjustable bed and sleep upright sort of for the first 1 to 3 hours. Then on my side. When I go to the chair it is just right for upright sleep.

I go to the gym at 5 am and need 30 mins to an hour before doing my gym routines.

At 64 I love a good nap. At work at lunchtime for 10-15 minutes. On the weekends for 20 - 25 minutes. Naps are always upright just like a meditation sitting posture.

6-7hrs. Go to bed between 10:30-11:00pm, wake up between 5:00-5:30am. Forcing functions: my wife works 5am-1:30pm so I have kid duty in the morning. Have 3 kids, including a baby. I'm in the office 9am-4pm, but refuse to stay later because family (kids' sports, dinner together, etc), so I put in 1-2hrs of additional work most nights.

To tie this to the post about workplace culture/stress affecting health, while my current schedule is perfectly sustainable, the one thing that got cut out of my daily routine as a direct result of spending 1.5hrs commuting each day is exercise. I went from running 40-50 miles per week and hitting the gym 2-3x to playing sports 2 days a week, going to the gym only on weekends, and not running at all.

I refuse to allow work to rule my life. If I consistently have more work to do than I am able within a reasonable amount of time (say, 45 hrs/wk, max), then I escalate and make it a management problem.

I know that feeling of wanting to get a few more things done before going to bed. But I also know (from many times that I have tried) that I will not be able to trust my work the next day. I'll misunderstand things or just forget to follow through and have to clean up later. So personally, if I'm working on a long project that's important to me, I'll try to make sure I'm getting to sleep most of the time. Anyway to answer your question, I can get away with about 5 hours of sleep only once, but I need closer to 7 on a regular basis.

7 minimum, 8.5 max.

I get migraines frequently (1-6 per month) and sleep seems to be one of the biggest contributing factors.

Less than 7 hours almost correlates directly with waking up with a headache.

More than 8.5-9 and I tend to feel lazy and unmotivated.

7 hours and 15 minutes on average (according to Fitbit)

I can’t function without 8-9 hours of sleep. Sometimes I try and it doesn’t end well. So I work to avoid it.

Great question, thanks for asking it. I'm really curious about other replies.

Before I had kids, I used to sleep 8...9 hours. I used to not set an alarm, and just let my body figure out when it was time to wake up. I felt I needed about 8h to function well.

Since I have kids, I get up before the rest of the family to get some work done (or sometimes, just to decompress and get some alone time).

In order to carve out that time, I consciously decided to sleep a bit less. I aim for 7h, but I use "Sleep as Android", which tries to wake me in a light-sleep phase "around" my waking time, so ends up between 6.5h and 7h.

Turns out, I can function reasonably well with that. Less than 6h and I'm pretty useless though. I notice I can't concentrate well, but most crucially can't resist the pull of distractions like HN and Reddit. Days after little sleep tend to be lost to procrastination.

I've also noticed that I'm becoming less tolerant of little sleep now that I'm nearing 40 years of age.

Wow this is the same as me. Never realized how big an impact kids would have.

6 to 8 hours. I basically haven't had the same sleep schedule from one day to the next in roughly 20 years. That oddity started when I got... hooked on the World Wide Web in the mid 1990s. It has proven practically impossible, and or undesirable, to go back to a normal schedule ever since. So one day I might go to sleep at 4am, the next at 2pm. My point of sleep typically rotates around semi randomly, for example if I stay up later to do something that can rotate it further the next day, or if I sleep one hour sooner or later etc. This lifestyle is, apparently, likely to shorten my life expectancy. No alarms, unless there's something I absolutely have to be up at a certain time for. To make this functional, sometimes I have to plan ahead on an intentional sleep schedule rotation for unavoidable time commitments (or otherwise get stuck with less than ideal sleep).

8-9 hours. If I don't, I usually take a nap.

Also, be aware of "sleep debt", which can be paid back up to 1-2 weeks, during which you will sleep longer than normal, but it is normal, because one has sleep debt that is being paid back.

source: The Promise of Sleep, Dr. William Dement, Sleep Researcher @ Stanford University.

> because one has sleep debt that is being paid back

Is there any concrete scientific evidence that one can 'cheat' during the week sleeping only 4, 5 hours and then catch up and pay the 'sleep debt' over the weekend?

I've seen 1 off 'research' articles that this is possible but I'm not buying it.

I bet you could get plenty of anecdotal evidence on this. What would you want to see from research? Metrics on awake vs sleep deprived vs "caught up after sleep deprivation"? Sounds interesting.

I don't have the studies handy but "Why We Sleep" goes into the myriad bad things that happen when you short sleep, all backed by studies. Those bad things aren't "undone" five days later; every night you short sleep is doing irreversible damage along a variety of facets (immune, memory, learning, emotional stability, restoration, etc). Indeed it's absurd to imagine one could wreak havoc on their health for days on end, an incredibly complex system, and then undo it all on the weekend with a few extra hours.

I'm almost 40. I sleep 8-9 hours a night (typically 10-6, sometimes ~9:30-6:30) and wake up feeling rested without an alarm. In my 20s I needed to sleep 10+ hours a night or I was miserable; but I also pulled roughly one all-nighter a week. Can't do that anymore.

An average of 7 hours per day over a running 3 days. If I know I need to wake up a bit earlier, I do (prompted by sunlight) and if I know I can have a couple more hours in bed (prompted by sunlight, but checking the clock when intitially waking).

This is complimented by opportunities in the day. Shuttle bus rides between offices (about an hour) - sometimes happy to doze, sometimes in email; after lunch straight back at desk with/without office banter, sometimes in a quiet corner having a snooze.

I am also in a consulting role now, but have been with the team for a year+ and have become a piece of the furniture. Having a kip during work hours is bonding! Taste your team and see of the fit you make.

I'm 26 and doing something similar to you - working a contracting day job and building a product in the evenings. This means I'm up between 8am - 2am on weekdays (6hrs sleep) and catch up on sleep on the weekend.

I'm generally in bed for ~8 hours, and sleep 6h30-7h30 of those hours (6h50 on average).

Had you asked me to give you an estimate 6 months ago, I would have said "8 hours". Getting a Fitbit watch was a big eye opener.

I'm of the opinion that sleep is critical to any knowledge work, and that sleep debt should be avoided. So I dont use an alarm, and I sleep from 3-12 hours. I average somewhere around 7.

Every day of the week is the same for me. Wake up at 5:45am and in bed by 10:30pm.

For me, I'm 100% a morning person and can't function at the end of my day. After 9pm, my brain shuts off entirely.

I'm roughly the same. I try to be in bed by 9 and wake up at 6. Though it varies a tiny bit on weekends. Going to bed "early" is a habit now and staying up is pretty tough.

Week days I average 6 hours a night. Wake up 6:20am, generally I fall asleep at midnight to 12:40am.

However, I commute an hour by bus, so I get a bit more sleep there and back usually. But definitely not REM sleep, so I'm not sure what that counts for.

Weekends I average about 9 hours at night. I'll go to sleep at the same time generally, but I sleep in til 9:00.

Between 7 and 8 hours, probably closer to 8 most days. Alarm is flexible between 08.00 and 08.30. 6- hours of sleep happens every now and then too ofc. and 9+, not that much though. I'm usually not tired until bedtime. I can probably reduce it to 6 - 7 hours and be a bit tired half of the day. I don't drink coffee.

Am usually asleep by 10-10:30pm. Our 1yo and 3yo sleep from about 7-8pm until 6am, which means that we all wake up at 6am.

On nights I may be completing a few work items, I have a more difficult time falling asleep quickly the less time there is between stopping work and getting in bed as I am still thinking about it.

I try to be in bed by 9pm and up by ~4:30am most days, including weekends. If I sleep in on weekends too much, it ruins my schedule for the following week and I feel exceptionally tired on Mondays.

(Late 20s, work a 7-3 as an engineer, married but no kids. Really like this schedule.)

Nothing keeps me up other than enjoying the night and working better then. I tend to sleep about 4am-11am and my FitBit claims I get around 6.5 hours of actual sleep a night. I would like more but I don't want to get to work too late.

I'm usually down by 1 am, and up at 9 am weekdays. My fit bit says I get about 7 hours sleep during that period. Most weeks I have 1-2 days where I take an afternoon nap of about an hour.

7 hours, sometimes less sometimes more. Usually more when I have a few days of less sleep in a row. In bed anywhere from 1130 to 1 AM on weekdays, up anywhere from 6 to 9 AM. Daylight savings time makes it much worse :)

Usually get up between 6 and 7am. My body basically forces me into bed by 11pm, often earlier.

It's not as fun as staying up until the am every night, but I sure don't miss feeling tired and sluggish all day.

I start getting sleepy around 9pm, and am usually in bed by 10pm. I'll wake up around 7-7:30am. I wish I were one of those people who thrived on just 5 hours, but I'm not that at all.

During winter from 11pm to 7am. At summer from 11pm to 5am and an hour at midday. Usually I get less sleep during summer and that's probably due to my body absorbing more sunlight.

Up between 4:30 - 6am daily depending how groggy I am from the night before.

Usually asleep between 10-11 unless I'm out with friends in which case I might be up until 1 or 2 - once or twice a week.

I’ve tracked my sleep patterns for the past 1106 nights w/ Sleep Cycle — my average time in bed is 8:31 hours, went to bed on average 21:32 and woke up 6:05.

6 to 8 hours most days.

At times, I will do 4 to 5 hours when I'm really into something.

If I don't abuse that, it works fine.

When I do, it takes a little while, many 8 to 10 hour sleep days to recover.

About 9 hours, no alarm clock, going to sleep at 10pm, waking up at 7am.

Well at least I used to, we’ve got our second child this week, so I have no sleep at the moment.

5 hours. Up at 3am and in bed at 10pm. Work is 6am-3pm to skip traffic.

Instead of staying up late because I'm excited about a project, I wake up earlier for it.

~6 due to how early my kid's bus comes. I could go to bed earlier, but I hate giving up my "kid free" time.

7, and I try to always be awake before my 6am alarm. If I hit it, I know I'm in for a less than stellar day

Most nights: in bed by 9, read until 10-11, sleep until 6-7.

So, on average, 8, with occasional swerves into 7 or 9.

9 hours. My ability to run on little to no sleep died when I turned 30.

I usually sleep 9 hours, sometimes 10. I enjoy sleeping.

I don't think there needs to be any justification for sleeping more than others report.

My 2 kids average 10-11 hours and sometimes I'll go to bed and wake up at the same time as them. Normally I do about 8 to get some time for side projects or other things, but I usually need around 9 to really feel refreshed.

6 hours and 45 minutes according to my Fitbit

5:54hrs on average according to Health app.

7hr 2min, but should be having more.

7ish hours, unless I'm on my jump-rope regimen (~2000x per day) then it drops to about 5 hours.

Around 6.

5-6

6 or 7

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