Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - Anyone successfully reduced sleep hours per night?

sadavis00 · 11-26-2006, 06:02 AM

I too am trying to reduce sleep, two ideas I'm finding to be useful so that I can intellectually justify my decision are:

1. According to a book on sleep research ("Why we sleep") people need about five hours of sleep to rest their cerebellum (which can only be done during sleep). The rest is OPTIONAL sleep. If we don't get it we feel tired, and unmotivated, but there in LITTLE effect on our mental/physical performance. - so if we have enough conscious motivation that counteract biologically loss of motivation, we can reduce sleep to about 5 hours and suffer no ill effects.

2. "given the opportunity, most of us would eat more, drink more and have more sex. But this doesn't mean we have been deprived or have unfulfilled needs. " - So, the tiredness associated with less sleep should be tolerated (and not a problem that needs to be fixed), just like how I tolerate the distress I feel when don't eat isn't good me, but which I like. (Weird I know).

So basically, it is not unhealthy to sleep less than 8 hours. Its OK to feel tired, all that I have to do is build conscious motivation such that biological tiredness/lack of motivation that comes less sleep is counterbalanced my conscious motivation. With conscious motivation, it is easy to tolerate the tiredness that comes from lack of sleep.

11-26-2006, 06:02 AM	#36 (permalink)
sadavis00 Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 98	I too am trying to reduce sleep, two ideas I'm finding to be useful so that I can intellectually justify my decision are: 1. According to a book on sleep research ("Why we sleep") people need about five hours of sleep to rest their cerebellum (which can only be done during sleep). The rest is OPTIONAL sleep. If we don't get it we feel tired, and unmotivated, but there in LITTLE effect on our mental/physical performance. - so if we have enough conscious motivation that counteract biologically loss of motivation, we can reduce sleep to about 5 hours and suffer no ill effects. 2. "given the opportunity, most of us would eat more, drink more and have more sex. But this doesn't mean we have been deprived or have unfulfilled needs. " - So, the tiredness associated with less sleep should be tolerated (and not a problem that needs to be fixed), just like how I tolerate the distress I feel when don't eat isn't good me, but which I like. (Weird I know). So basically, it is not unhealthy to sleep less than 8 hours. Its OK to feel tired, all that I have to do is build conscious motivation such that biological tiredness/lack of motivation that comes less sleep is counterbalanced my conscious motivation. With conscious motivation, it is easy to tolerate the tiredness that comes from lack of sleep.