This was originally posted on The Wired blog, written by Daniel Dumas You may more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours.
That figures. Until the invention of the light bulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered
10 hours a night.
Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon.
In one study, "evening people"
almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.
Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone
cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You'll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.
Do you agree with any of these assessments? How many hours of sleep do you get? If your get more than eight hours, are you refreshed or sluggish?
Comments (66)
I sleep around 7 hr. during the weekday? & weekends vary.
i'll give a try x3 haha... hello mice xD
I agree with them for the most part. I sleep from 5am to 1-3pm. Haha. (:
I'd love to get more than eight hours of sleep so I can find out if I agree or disagree with the assesments.
I tried sleeping late, but many times I feel sluggish and lazy. In the morning I have a window of a few hours where I can get work done and then I need a nap. So it may be wrong, but then again I make up for my lack of sleep on weekends.
I, as a teenager, have been known to sleep for record hours when I don't have school. Usually I run on 5-6. Over the summer and on breaks, I've been known to knock out a good 12. =P
Usually I wake up feeling refreshed if I get 6-8, but around 12, I sleep too much and I'm lethargic all day. Ick.
Sweet. I had no idea. I knew there was a reason I hated waking up in the early AM. Second shift is so much nicer to me =]
I don't like sleeping too much. It makes me feel slightly sluggish and as if I'm missing out on life.
this article is so right. it's like trying to chase lost time to try and wake up early.
Being a night owl since I've started college, I completely agree with these assessments. Ever since my insomniac inception, I am wayyyy more creative. I usually find myself randomly thinking of great art pieces or amazing inventions at 3 or 4 in the morning; & I am neither an artist nor inventor. I do write a lot though [I'm studying for Journalism] & I find that if I write a fictional story very late at night, I like the outcome more.
I usually sleep at 4am, 3am being the earliest & 5am being the latest. I usually awake at 1pm. If I sleep at the "usual" times [being 10pm-12am] & waking up around 7am or 8am, I am horribly tired. Although I get the same amount of hours no matter what time I would sleep, I feel way more refreshed if I wake up at 1. I was having a discussion with my boyfriend recently about my dislike for the mornings & that no matter if I got 10 hours of sleep [which is a requirement for me if I'm to wake up in the morning as opposed to the afternoon], I still feel very lethargic. But if I got 7 or 8 hours of sleep & I awoke in the afternoon, I feel great.
It's weird, but I love being nocturnal. (=
yup, maybe it's because i'm a student at a large university but i am friends with a lot of different creative types, and it seems that all of us have this habit of getting creative after 2am when we "should be" sleeping.
i always thought it was the sleep deprivation pushing one's mind to an almost hallucinatory point, to be honest.
I felt like I have always been a morning person, but always wound up tired afternoon. Lately since sleeping late, I DO feel well rested by getting more sleep in. AND THE CREATIVITY thing is completely correct! I come up with all different kind of ideas late at night, and they are awesome! Something about the quietness at night that puts you in the zone...good read ;)
I so agree! 10 hours is good for me. I'm actually alert. Where as, when I get eight hours, I'm alert, but with only half of that I actually would be if I got ten hours of sleep.
Since it's the holiday, I sleep after midnight and wake up at around 12 the next day, so I get about 12 hours of sleep. Which my parents think is "really unhealthy" - sleeping late and waking up late.
But this post begs to differ.
My sleep varies wildly, sometimes four hours, sometimes 12+.
I'm generally up all night and asleep all day.
I don't get enough sleep. 8 hours is bliss for me, most school nights I get 6 or less. Whenever I get say, 10 hours.. I collapse from exhaustion....... I can't stop.
yay! at least I have some positives going for me!! haha
"I know I go to bed at 5:00am, but at least I'm creative!"
I totally agree with the creativity reason. I'm a total night owl. And guess what? For me, that's when my creativity pumps up.
It's no wonder Anna Nalick has that song that says: "2am and I'm still awake writing a song if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me threatening the life it belongs to." I totally get that. Ha ha!I do my best writing late at night. That's when the creative juices flow most naturally, I guess.
I like to get around 8 hours of sleep each night,
but I go to bed pretty early most of the time and wake up really early regardless of when I went to bed.
I usually wake up between 5 and 7 am,
and if I've been out drinking or have a raging hangover I still wake up pretty early, the latest is usually like 10 am.
I'm my most productive and happiest in the early morning, and I'm kind of an artist and writer so I'd consider myself pretty damn creative.
So I guess I'm an anomaly.
I can't sleep past 11am no matter what time I go to sleep or else I'll feel lazy so usually I'll get up and then take a nap a few hours later. I'm a design major and I love to paint, draw, sew, write basically anything creative I love doing it and in college I realized that I'm able to concentrate and work better at night than any other time of the day.
8-9 hours is good for me. 10 or more and i feel so lethargic the whole day. i might think better or what ever but... i feel like crap haha
ditto on night owls are more creative!
it seems that i typically function the best when i get about 9 hours. it all depends though on certain things.. if i've had a lack of sleep during previous nights.. how much is going on in life, ect. but usually 9 hours will do it. there is also times when i wake up after about that much sleep, and kind of in a way force myself to go back to sleep, waking up 1 maybe 2 hours later.. sometimes more. i end up waking up with a headache and feeling more tired than i was originally and having an extremely sluggish few hours to begin my day. it's sometimes hard for me to find the happy medium, but i'm surely working on it!
I think night owls tend to be more creative because there is nothing better to do between 12-6 for most people. I myself find myself writing or drawing when I can't sleep, just to keep myself occupied.
I get sluggish if I wake up in the morning after getting 8 hours of sleep, but fall back to sleep for a few more hours. However, if I sleep from the time I go to bed straight through for 12 hours or whatever, I feel fine.