I wear an Oura ring and and Apple Watch with a sleep app. Both of these devices agree on when I’m underslept, and they are both correct; when my watch says I’m underslept, I feel stupid and tired and my chess.com scores plummet. My chronic pain condition is also much worse when I’m underslept. Additionally, I do not use an alarm clock, so my body will claw back the sleep it needs. If I only get 6 hours two nights in a row, I will sleep 9 hours the following night, but I habitually wake up after 7-8 hours. I can observe these patterns in my recorded sleep data, and they are robust over long stretches of time.
I say all of the above because frankly my own personal experience and data tracking is sufficient evidence for me to basically disregard any sort of thesis claiming that I need less sleep. Maybe you need less sleep, I don’t know. Do the experiment, try to sleep less for a couple of days, see if you physically implode. I would put money on the “you will probably learn that you were already pretty in tune with your body’s needs” outcome.
I wear an Oura ring and and Apple Watch with a sleep app. Both of these devices agree on when I’m underslept, and they are both correct; when my watch says I’m underslept, I feel stupid and tired and my chess.com scores plummet. My chronic pain condition is also much worse when I’m underslept. Additionally, I do not use an alarm clock, so my body will claw back the sleep it needs. If I only get 6 hours two nights in a row, I will sleep 9 hours the following night, but I habitually wake up after 7-8 hours. I can observe these patterns in my recorded sleep data, and they are robust over long stretches of time.
I say all of the above because frankly my own personal experience and data tracking is sufficient evidence for me to basically disregard any sort of thesis claiming that I need less sleep. Maybe you need less sleep, I don’t know. Do the experiment, try to sleep less for a couple of days, see if you physically implode. I would put money on the “you will probably learn that you were already pretty in tune with your body’s needs” outcome.