Sleep Faster

I recently heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about sleeping faster. This caught my attention. How can someone sleep faster? He said every person needs about six hours of sleep, he also knows some people say they need eight hours. His answer to that was, “Those people just need to learn to sleep faster.” I thought this was funny, and since I’m always looking for a way to improve efficiency and effectiveness, I started thinking about it.

If we sleep eight hours a day we end up sleeping about 1/3 of our lives. That means if we live for 75 years, we sleep for 25 of those years. It seems crazy when you put it in those terms, right? If we could reduce sleeping to six hours a day instead of eight, we would reduce that sleeping time to 18.75 years. That’s crazy! That means we could gain an extra seven years of living simply by decreasing our amount of sleep by two hours a day. Now, of course, the assumption is if you decrease the amount you sleep you live the same amount of time. I don’t think there is any evidence those who sleep less live shorter lives, so I’m going with the theory that whether you’re sleeping six hours a day or eight hours a day, you would live the same number of years.

Another way to think about it is if you sleep six hours a day instead of eight hours a day that’s an extra two hours per day. Multiply that by 365 days, which will give you an extra thirty 24-hour days per year! Imagine, you just turned a 12-month year into a 13-month year simply by sleeping two hours less per night.

Is it sustainable? Can it be done? I’m not sure yet. I’m going to try and experiment to find out for myself.  I’m going to sleep exactly 6 hours per day for the next 30 days, and at the end of those 30 days, I will let you know how it turned out. I will let you know if I’m feeling better or worse, or tired and fatigued or more energized and full of life. I’ll start today, this is March 12^th, and I will go through April 12th and I’ll let you know the results. Stay tuned.

I think it’s a very intriguing and interesting idea. Comment here and let me know if you’ve had some experience doing this, or what you think is going to happen. 

Keep living every minute,

Dr. Tim