Sleep Question

I know a handful of people who can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep. This baffles me. I am on day four of 7 hours of sleep and I feel half dead. 8 hours usually seems just about on the money, but I find it pretty hard to achieve that. Everyone I know seems to need less sleep than me.

CNN reported today that the average person gets 7 hours of sleep. I don’t think that’s true… it seems too high. At least for the 20-35 age group.

So let’s informally and unscientifically conduct a survey.

What would you say is the average amount of sleep you get per night?
Figure weekends into your average, because those count too.

29 thoughts on “Sleep Question

  • 10/4/2006 at 7:33 am
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    I think 7-8 hours. My dad only needs 6-7, but he’s also one of those who can be dead tired and take a 20 minute nap and be ready to go again. Great for a soldier. I wonder if he learned that in the Army.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 7:57 am
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    I get 8 1/2 to 9 hours a night usually, though school and stress change that. Sleep psychology has shown that people, on average, require 8.4 hours. Averages are only central tendencies, though, and there are individual differences such that some people function well on 5 hours and others on 10. Also, some people report needing only 4 hours but then if you run a sleep study and get rid of the caffeine and any sense of time, they end up regulating at 8 hours. Self reports are subject to bias and social desirability (i.e. Americans think its cool to need little sleep)

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  • 10/4/2006 at 8:15 am
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    7.5-8, but only if I’m lazy (most of the time).

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  • 10/4/2006 at 8:45 am
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    6 hours. I don’t exactly feel like a million bucks either.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 8:46 am
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    Lately I think I’ve been averaging 6-7 which is an hour or two less than I’d like. I’m trying to move my bedtime earlier in an effort to get 8 hours per night. I’m getting a decent amount of sleep but I’d like more.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 9:14 am
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    I average 5. By the time I’m done doing hw after work/FIRST stuff, I’m usually going to bed around 2am and up by 7am. Of course, some nights I don’t get to sleep till 3/4am, and then on the weekends I might get like 8 hours, so, it all balances out.

    However, ideally, I’d like to get atleast 6 hours to function nicely.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 9:33 am
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    I need at least 8, but its not uninterrupted and that may be my problem. I have to pee at least once during the night, and then i hear people making noise downstairs. But as long as I get around 8 hours I’m ok. I wish i could test uninterrupted but my stupid bladder and the damn dogs dont really allow that to happen.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 9:49 am
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    I can add datapoints for Drew, Tyler and I:
    Drew: 7.14 (only about 6-6.5 on weeknights though)
    Tyler: 9.4 (8ish on weeknights)
    Me: 7.9 (7.5 on weeknights)

    And I don’t think its how long you sleep but that you don’t interrupt the deep sleep cycles… I’ve definitely been super awake after sleeping only 5 hours in the past just because I got up between deep sleeps.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 10:18 am
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    8.14!
    Also Mike D: I am taking a Statistics class, and we have to do a project with data like this. I could do a study for you!! My teacher also showed an example using data from another section of her class about how much sleep they got, so that could add 30 data points right there.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 10:35 am
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    I try to shoot for 9, it is my ideal. Last night I went to bed at 9PM, psyched to be getting a ridiculously large amount of sleep, only to be awaked by my new room mate at 2:30AM, needing me to figure out how to open his car door.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 11:14 am
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    Jon is officially creepy. That is a spot on analysis of my sleeping patterns. Though I sleep less when I’m not active, i.e. climbing, biking, running and so forth.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 12:07 pm
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    Tyler… didn’t you know? Jon Abad knows every single person’s sleep schedule north of the Mason Dixon line. Really, instead of taking a poll I should have just asked Jon what the tally comes to. He can also do most excel function in his head, so a simple AVERAGE(MasonDixon,North;time_sleep) function probably would have done it.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 12:08 pm
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    whoa.

    that would be sick. What statistics class are you taking?

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  • 10/4/2006 at 12:09 pm
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    I try to do the same. But fail miserably every single night.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 12:17 pm
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    While I could do all that, its just easier to be the last one to go to sleep in the house and have a vague idea of when people are getting up in the morning.

    Kinda necessary when you share a bathroom and need to coordinate schedules.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 2:05 pm
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    Pre Ultimate-Ultimate-Intern-Girl, I would get about 8.5 hours of sleep.

    Now, it’s more like 7.5 hours.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 6:52 pm
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    b/c of my schedule, it would be nearly impossible for me to get 8 hours of sleep. I wake up between 4 and 5 am on most days, and dont arrive home till somewhere close to 8pm. In order for me to actually get 8 hours, i’d have to literally go to bed as soon as i walked in the door.

    I’m slowly learning to function on 5 to 6 hours of sleep with a power nap up to 30 minutes somewhere in the day. The sad part is that on weekends, my body wont let me sleep in usually, so at most i might add two hours.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 8:22 pm
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    I average probably 6-7 hours, I need around that for a normal work day. On the road, such as now, I need probably 8 to not be exhausted when I get back to the hotel.

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  • 10/4/2006 at 10:10 pm
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    I get between 9 and 10 hours of sleep. Uninterrupted I would get 12 hours of sleep each night, but outside factors prevent that.

    Of course, I don’t work…or do much of anything for that matter. Did I mention that I love to sleep? I’m thinking of becoming a permanent bum.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 7:52 am
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    It’s MA 511: Applied Stats for Scientists & Engineers. Basically glorified MA2611, Regular Stats.

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  • 10/5/2006 at 8:25 am
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    I have wild swings of sleep amounts. Lately, though, I’m on the low end. I’ve been getting about 5.5 hours average over the week. When I’m not so crazy, I get about 6.5 on average, and I feel much better. Actually, if I get exactly 6.5 hours of sleep in a night, I feel just about perfect in the morning. Must be a sleep cycle thing.

    On Saturdays, I wake up after 6.5 – 7 hours regardless of being “allowed” to sleep in. Mostly it’s because I have to pee and I’m hungry. I take care of the needs, and then take a nap on the sofa. I think Miker finds that weird. You know what? I find it weird too. But it’s what I do.

    When my dad worked (he has since retired), he only slept 5.5 hours a night, even on weekends. Now he’s up to a more sensible 7 hours a night, though he thinks he’s wasting his day away.

    My mom sleeps only 4 hours during the night and takes a 2 hour nap every afternoon. That’s probably where the nap thing came from.

    My sister, however, seems to sleep enough for the rest of our family. Uninterrupted, the girl would sleep for 12 hours easily, and still be grumpy if you woke her up. With work and school, though, she probably only averages 9 or 10.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 11:29 am
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    Ok, my turn. I have small kids so I get interrupted in my sleep almost every night. I figure I need about 8 hours. I figure I get about 8 hours. But I’m so darn tired all the time! I agree that uninterrupted sleep is much more restful.

    Curious fact: I can’t nap. Once I’m awake it’s dern near impossible for me to get back to sleep.

    Also I figure high stress levels contribute to the lack of restfulness of my sleep. But that’s a whole other study there.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 1:05 pm
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    Good lord, I love what this implies.

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  • 10/6/2006 at 3:00 pm
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    Ah, yes.

    However, your implication would be incorrect. UUIG is still a college student, and she lives 5 hours away. Phone calls, dear Aaron, are the cause of the missing hour of sleep each night.

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  • 10/8/2006 at 12:07 pm
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    If you are interested to know the habits of the “average American”, you can refer to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Not only will it break it down by activity, but also age, sex, race, marital status, employment, educational level, having kids, etc… all sorts of fascinating stuff. I think it’s worth perusing. I find I’m pitifully below the US average on sleep (vs. the national average I get about 6.5 vs. 8.34 hrs weekday and 8 vs. 9.3 hrs weekends) and I also watch no TV (2.37 hrs weekday and 3.07 weekends). Figuring that, I have roughly 4.21 extra weekday hours and 4.37 extra weekend hours. Yet I STILL get nothing accomplished. How can this be? Full time working men over 25 work about 8.65 hrs per weekday. I leave home at 7:45 and get home at 6. If transit counts for “working” then I lose 1.6 hrs there, but that’s still leaves me 2.61 hrs. I should be able to do amazing things. That’s an extra 28 days per year! I have an entire February more free time than the average American, and yet I’m a total bum. So sad…

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  • 10/10/2006 at 5:40 am
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    I usually get 6-7 hours a night during the week, although now I have broadband in the new flat that might end up shrinking to 5-6. At the weekend, I get 11-13* per night if I’m at home, or 4-7 if I’m at an Ultimate tournament.

    * I need this to catch up on all the sleep I miss during the week. Left uninterrupted, I will regularly sleep for 11+ hours. I need at least 10 not to feel really tired in the morning and have trouble getting up.

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