Terry Jones

I don’t seem to need to sleep as much as some. I’m perfectly happy with 4 hours a night, can probably go indefinitely on 6 hours a night, and anything more is just cream. That’s not to say I don’t like sleep. I love it. I’ll happily stay in bed for 12 hours if I feel like it. I think I’ve been like this my whole life – my parents told me that when I was a kid they’d just leave me in bed awake when they went to sleep. My son is perhaps also like this, he never wants to go to sleep – though he’s often determined to sleep in.

When I’ve slept 4 hours, I don’t feel impaired in any way. I’m happy to then get up and work 16 hours – certainly not as efficiently as some people, but that’s just me, it’s not because I’m tired.

So I always wonder about sleep advocates who insist that all humans need 8 hours of sleep a night, or else. It feels like a conspiracy of people who really do need that much sleep, trying to stop those of us who can work much longer hours from getting ahead.

After all, have you ever heard that you really need to sleep 8 hours from someone who only needs 4 hours a night?

I didn’t think so.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.