How much sleep do you need?
 

Just curious. I get less sleep than the 'required' eight hours on a regular basis. But then occasionally when I get very little sleep I feel like complete crap all day and I wonder if I normally got a greater amount then I could more easily dip below to very little sleep.

Sometimes getting too much is more exhausting than not getting enough.
Maybe too much rearrangement of the brain is a bad thing.

I can manage on 6, I do best on 7. The problem I have is that I have to go to bed early, I have a very hard time sleeping in past 6am. I tend to get up around 4:30am for work.

I think getting enough sleep is very important for a clear mind, for getting creative juices flowing, being productive, *and* for staying healthy.

Depends what I'm doing. If I have activities to keep me occupied (travelling, going out drinking, sex, outdoor activities) I can get by just fine day after day on 2-5 hours of sleep. If I don't have anything to do then I'll be in bed between 10 and 11 and up at 7.

I've always needed more sleep - 8.5 hours is perfect. However, I usually get 5-6. That's not awful, but I end up worn out after a week of it. The worst is 7 hours - I wake up utterly exhausted. I think it has something to do with sleep cycles, and at 7 hours I wake up in the middle of one, or something.

I'm lucky if I get 2 hours. I think this past week I've had a total of 5 from Sunday until today.

I definitively need more than 8! How much more? No clue, my rythm barely gets a week or two to settle before I start messing with it ;)

I need 7 to function. If I get more than that I'm actually really sluggish. But how I miss the days when I could lay in bed for like 10 hours and feel fine.
Sucks getting older.

8+ and no less. I love my sleep and that's that.

recently, i tried getting 8 or less but find myself sleeping past the alarm into 9 or 10hrs of sleep. but it's just the time of day. going to bed at 12am will be REALLY hard to wake up at 8. but going to bed at 4 will be easy to wake up at 12pm. i guess i'll never be a real morning person.

if i dont get a good 12 hours i get cranky

Depends on the day really. There are time when I feel just fine with 4 hours of sleep. Then there are other times that I feel absolutely exhausted even though I've slept 12 hours. Then there are the times that I can't sleep at all, boy are those fun. Nothing like gaming all night long.

With our newborn, I'm usually getting around 5hrs a night and seem to be doing OK. That's because my job isn't too stressful or physically demanding.

It's on the weekends when we're corralling the kids and running errands that I really feel my lack of sleep. Afternoon naps are a must and Kids willing, we can add an extra hour or two then.

Last night was a sweet 7hrs.

I'm in bed a good 9-10 hours on days I don't have to wake up for anything, but I don't sleep that entire time. I wake up about every two hours, get re-comfy and fall back to sleep. I think I need a new bed-I can sleep less anywhere else but home and feel ok. At home, I feel crappy hours after awakening. Of course, anywhere else and I'm sleeping alone-that helps a lot as well since there's no one snoring or sharing space.

I like about 7.5 hours of sleep a night, but I've got to wake up on my own or else I just feel groggy for the rest of the day. I absolutely have to wake up at the right point in my sleep cycle or else I'll feel like a drunken sailor for most of the morning, very groggy and out of it.

The days where I wake up at the right point and the right time are amazing. The rest require vast amounts of coffee.

Who the hell voted for 8+?


You bastards.

I used to be fine with 6 hours or less, but now I do better with 7-8 hours. I guess I'm getting old.

Prolly my 19 year old neice-spends at least 16hrs a day in bed if allowed (the rest is spent out partying.........oh to be 19 again!) :shakehead: :thumbsup:

Asleep by midnight and up at 6:30, but I wake up all the time in the middle of the night, sometimes for a total of 15 minutes other times two hours. I seem to be fine through out the day though

I need 6-7 but I generally get 5-6....7 hours is my ideal....I cannot sleep 8 hours, it gives me a headache.

hmm.. i was intending of picking 5-7 :\.... so which do i pick 4-6 or 6-8... either one messes up the overall image of it. ah well.

7 hours seems to be the magic number for me... any more and i'm groggy the entire day and any less and i'm irritable for at least 1/2 the day.

I would love it if someone would invent a pill that somehow concentrates your sleep cycles so that you can get the equivilant of 8 hours in 20 or 30 minutes. I'd make it myself and become a millionaire, but I'm no scientist... so I leave the idea to the rest of you. :)

I honestly go to sleep when I'm tired and wake up when I'm not.

I need 6-8 hours. I usually get 2-4. Insomnia and a lot of school work sucks.

With my old job, I usually got 5-6. I need between 7 and 8 to function well, and I don't think that's going to be a problem with my new job.

I sleep about 6 hours a night during the week, but even then I wake up quite a bit. A sneeze here, an urge to piss there, a really freaky vivid dream about walking around high school with no pants on (last night's main event).

On the weekends, I make myself stay in bed longer. I just get "re-comfy"--love that word :) --and have at it.

i'm happy with 6. 7 is perfect. 8 and i'll be refreshed for longer. but less than 6 and i start loosing my mind. over 8 when i have nothing to do. so i voted 8+. i'm sure if EVERYONE had nothing to do in their lives(no jobs), they'd sleep longer.

I can't ever understand how anyone could do differently...

Really? Well I stay up either doing work or just playing around for at least an hour after I'm actually tired. Then I wake up at the last possible moment so I can get ready for work/school/event rather I am still tired or not. Granted, I always like it when I'm not un-tired, but that seems to be a minority of days. In all fairness though, the tiredness wares off after somewhere between 15 min. and 2 hours later rather I've had 8 hours or 1 so that leads me to believe that I'm just a guy that hates getting out of bed in the morning, but is responsible enough to (almost) always do so.

I understand *feeling* tired or groggy, but whenever my body *needs* sleep, it has. And when it needs to wake up, it does. I can get by for weeks on a couple hours of sleep per day. But maybe that's a function of my living contexts ;)

My wife, on the other hand, goes down with the sun when she's not at work. She can't keep her eyes open for a midnight movie!

I don't need to sleep. I frequently go days without sleeping (I've been told it's not healthy, but I don't care).

Well, I voted for 8+, but I really only get about 5-6. Between work, projects, kids up late, I'm not in bed when I want to be, and I get up while I'm still tired as hell. What can you do though!

I do exactly the same: Mess around with something (games, music, forums) at least until midnight, and then force myself up using at least two alarms, then run to make my lectures. Unless I'm with my girlfriend, she needs around an hour less than me, and wakes up very easily.

I am happiest with 9. I can survive on 7 for a few days though.

^^ On an entirely random note, I love that someone in Norway and someone in New Jersey do things the same way. :p

/end threadjack

About 7 hours is sufficient for me, but going back to sleep for another 2-3 hours after that is simply divine. When I can do that on the weekend, it's the best rest I get all week. When I took a trip to Japan after high school, my host father told me about how that "second sleep" is the most restful and that most people around there wake up with the sun and then fall back asleep for another couple of hours. I don't know what it is about that, but ever since I started setting on alarm for 5am (to go to the bathroom) and then another for 7am, waking up hasn't seemed so bad. As long as I'm in bed by midnight, the 5 hours--> go pee --> 2 hours schedule works like a charm. Of course, three out of four nights I just stay up too late and skip setting the early alarm to avoid disrupting my sleep cycle too much.

...I should really make myself get to bed on time. :P

I love that you use *at least* two alarms. I thought I was the only person that does that. It drove one of my friends I used to live with nuts because he was a light sleeper so by the time my second alarm went off he would be up for the day. Anymore, I am using three alarms. I have two on my clock that I set between 5-15 minutes apart for the ideal time I want to get up then I have an electronic cooking timer that I set when I go to bed as my last resort alarm, in case I say 'screw it' to my plans for getting up a bit earlier and doing stuff.

Well I am strongly Norwegian by heritage, maybe it heralds back to our ancestors days of looting, pillaging, and boozing all night then having to get up early and haul our booty back to our wives and children. ;-)

Between 5 and 8 hours.

Too much sleep is bad.

I try to get between 6-8 hours of sleep.. but during school it usually ends up only being around 3-6 depending on a given night. I've found that surviving on 2 hour naps also seems to work out pretty well.

I sleep days and I still try to get 6 to 8 hours. Being a sound sleeper and having very dark shades helps. On my days off I tend to over sleep if I can. 8 to 10 hours.

I like about 7 to 8 hours, but sometimes only get 6. On weekends I sleep until I want to get up. That usually works out as about 8 hours anyway. Sometimes it seems like no amount of sleep is enough - I have no idea why. Recently I have been going to sleep at about midnight and find myself quite awake at about 7 am which is weird for me because I really like my bed. Go figure...

As I have grown a bit older and the choice to be a responsible adult who must manage day to day activity - the priority of sleep seems to become less and less.

4-6 hours is all I need.

Sleep is a really big issue for me. If I get too much I get a migraine and if I get to little I also get a migraine. I have to get exactly the same amount every night. 8 hours is perfect for me.

I usually make do with 4-6 hours.

The amount of sleep I've been getting for the past few years has been a lifetime high for me. I've had reoccurring bouts of severe insomnia ever since the age of 8. At its worst, I went for periods longer than a week without any sort of healthy sleep. I've been studied, evaluated, and been prescribed just about every sleep medication there is.

It turns out that the best cure for my insomnia was getting married and procuring a bunch of animals. I don't know what it is, but having my wife and a bunch of furry critters in bed seems to trigger some kind of den instinct that works every time.

I try to get about the same amount of sleep each night. Usually 7 to 8 hours. This never really works long though - I'm often going to bed later Friday nights or Saturday nights or getting up later Saturday or Sunday mornings. I'm also one of those people that can get migraines from a f'ed up sleep schedule...luckily the migraines don't happen often.

Whooooooooooooooo, I'm average

6-8 hours. :D :D

I don't think I've ever felt that I slept "too much" like some people are saying. I seem to possess a bottomless pit of sleep requirement.

I'm quite jealous. I wish I had such a malleable schedule.

I can estimate that I get around 6-7 hours of sleep on any typical night. :|

But here comes the kicker: :expressionless:

If for any reason I stay awake past midnight or beyond 75 min. of my usual ahem... *bedtime*(I usually go to bed around 9 or 10), my body needs a FULL 12 HOURS OF REST in order for proper functions to resume. :eek:

It's rightly strange, but let's set up the scenario: say I go out on the town to several clubs and don't get home until 2a.m. I would not be able to get up any earlier than 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, and what really sucks about this is that my internal clock has now been reset, causing my body to believe it is morning like any other day although I may awaken late in the afternoon. :oogle:

So, I go about being an insomniac for a couple of days before I can properly revert back to the Snooze Groove that I am used to. :sad:

It's righty bizarre.
I wonder if anyone else here functions similarly? :confused:

give me some of that :p


i'm a 4-6'er .. i consider sleep to be a necessary evil.
i'd rather not, but i'd rather not be tired, either.

consistency is key, for me.

even on weekends ... the alarm wake-up time stays the same.

if i go undistubed i can sleep 12+ hours.

if im on speed i can go without any for days..weeks. lmao

usually 6-8 gets me good.

The insomnia has taken ahold again.

I'd be lucky to get in a good four hours a day.

I think I need to get some well-deserved rest. :yawn:

Going from my last 10 years (undergrad/teaching/grad school) of pulling several all-nighters a semester, and generally getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night (if I was lucky), I think I've entered a fairly balanced stage now that I'm no longer taking coursework. Even though I have to wake up early for the fish factory, I still get at least 6 hours, often closer to 7 on weekdays, and 9+ on the weekends. Being married helps a lot with this pursuit... and not being in a long-distance relationship anymore (now we're just a few feet apart, lol)!

But, I know this is just a lull for a few years before we start having kids... then the sleep will drop again to ungodly levels. Let's not talk about that. :D

5-10. so voted for 6-8

sometimes it's great to wake up and notice that you went around the clock.. 12+ hrs means although that there has been some serious partying the preceeding dayz..

I need at least 12 hours and that's my average. Sometimes I only get 8-10 hours, but on other days I sleep up to 16 hours. I spend more time in bed than anywhere else ^_^

Well I said I need 8+ hours, but see it does ask how much do I average, so that would be different. In an ideal world I'd sleep 9 hours per night and would feel great. I usually get between 4 and 6 though. I stay up for most of the night and sleep until about 11am. I start work in the afternoon though, so that's why. I love sleeping and I love my bed. I have slept ridiculous amounts at times (like 14 hours) and then I feel like shit, mostly guilty for sleeping so long, but sometimes I think my body needs it. If I go days with very little sleep I start to feel like I used to when I was methed out, and that's not good. Sometimes people don't realize how bad constant lack of sleep is. Well for me anyways. When you start feeling like you did on drugs, not a good thing haha. I wish my sleeping patterns were more consistent though. I wish I could go to bed earlier too, but I am so much a nightowl.

I need at least 18 hours of sleep every day, without which i just cannot go on being the super-human, opera composing, masterpeice painting, sonet writing, charity fundraising, cancer curing HeGod that i normally am.

Most of the time i'm lucky to get by on 8, or i start getting really testy.

There's a bit of a discrepancy here... the title of the thread is "How much sleep do you need?" but the poll asks how much I sleep on an average night. Those are two very different questions.

I need around 8-10 but I have learned to function on the 6 I get on an average night. I can even function on 4 a night for less than three nights in a row if I have to.

I'll note that i need 6 to 8 hrs like i said before but to clarify, ITS NON STOP!
if the fucking cat wakes me up again, i'm going to install a spring door so that it's always closed.

I used to require 9 hours of sleep, if not more. I'm not sure why that was, but anything before 9 hours would make me feel groggy.

Now things have changed. I can have anywhere between 6-8 hours of sleep and I'm good to go!

I wonder why this is..

I get 6-8 Hrs of sleep!!

between 1 and 4. I never get more with my work/schooling

I get about 4 hrs on a good night.

4-6.

My favorite parts of the day are late night and early morning when it's still dark. So I have this little window where I can catch some z's yet still get my happy-me-time.

Ideally, about 7.5.