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"seems to do fine with 5 hours of sleep"

i'm always very skeptical about claims like that, for three reasons:

1. people who claim to work perfectly with less than 7 hours of sleep regularly are often used to it but actually slightly under-perform (in regards to their maximum efficiency) without noticing the difference.

2. there's a bit of societal pressure to sleep less; people sleeping 8-9 hours are sometimes seen as lazy. thus people sometimes falsely claim to sleep less than they actually do (or see pt. 1), which reinforces the original point.

3. a couple of very smart and/or successful people sleep very little at night because they're so productive and successful and sleep would take time away from this - what they forgot to mention are the frequent naps throughout the day.

you are right though that everyone's different. not only genetically - mental, physical and emotional exhaustion differ between jobs and hobbies. though i agree with some others here that sleeping much more than 10 hours regularly may be a sign of health problems or - nowadays more likely due to ubiquitous screens - poor sleep quality.




He definitely seems like the exception to the rule. Whereas if I've slept 5 hours I'll be ready to pack in at 4pm he's still fine.

And I'm pretty sure its not an act as he's older than me, consistently competent and I've known him like this for years,running the same schedule.

Probably just on one extreme of the bell curve.




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