The older I get, the more sensitive I am to sleep deprivation. It wasn’t very many years ago that “pulling all nighters” was a common occurrence at work. Now, if I did have to work all night, I’d likely have to take a day or two off to recoup. It’s quite frustrating.
Take this evening for instance. Last night, I didn’t get to sleep until about 12:30 AM. That doesn’t seem like a big deal to me, and in fact, I was able to get up at 6:30 AM and function.
For about 5 hours.
THEN, I was a zombie. Caffeine didn’t help, it just made me a jittery zombie. (And if you’re going to be a zombie, jittering isn’t really all that great) Only a nap, a friggen nap when I got home made my brain work again. And now it’s 9:00 PM, and I’m off to bed. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take a pillow to work. I’ll call it my horizontal lunch hour. 🙂
Yeah, I don’t do all nighters anymore. Well, I DO do them, but I have to take a 20 minute nap every few hours to function through it. It pretty much sucks. So yeah, we can be old and cranky together. I’m constantly sleep deprived this time of the year. I have to force myself to take a nap in the afternoon or mid-morning or else I’m falling over by 7pm. Pathetic.
Hmmm….brainzzzz!
I almost never get less than seven hours of sleep.
The reason is because lack of sleep exacerbates my depression, and as I like remaining happy and healthy, I make sure I get plenty of sleep.
I like to sleep about 6 hours a night and have a 1 hour nap in the afternoon. Usually I only get about 5.5 hours of sleep and a pot of coffee in the afternoon.
There was a time when I only slept 3 hours a night and it was fine. Those days are gone and I don’t care. I like sleep, I love my bed. Working from 6am to 3am every day was a crock of crap.
I’m with Michelle. I, too, am more depression prone and irritable when I’m sleep-deprived. I’m happiest when I get 9 hrs – I can do that when I work at home.
I almost had a breakdown last week due to 2+ weeks of only getting about 4 hours of sleep a night. Poor John had to put up with me being totally guano-class irrational at 4 in the morning because he was restless and it was keeping me up.
I have a very stubborn circadian rhythm, and it wants me to sleep between about 3 AM and Noon. I don’t nap well either.
I can still pull all-nighters, but I pay for it a day or two later.
Well, for most of my adult life, I slept whenever and wherever I could. In the military you learn to function without regular sleep. For about 8 month while I was in Iraq the last time, I don’t think I got more than 4 hours a day, and those 4 hours usually weren’t consecutive. and the there were a rather large number of times that I went literally days without sleep. After a couple of months of that, you really start to become a zombie.
I was always pretty proud of being able go without sleep – but, since I’ve retired and started sleeping regular for the last year I’ve found that I can no longer function without 7 hours of solid sleep, all in a row. Like you said, the older you get the harder it is to function without sleep.
Speaking of which, I’m going to bed. G’night.
I always had 8 hours as a target, but get by on 6-7 during the week, and then catch up with a couple of extra hours on Saturday.
My problem, with age, is that I no longer seem to be able to fall asleep when I feel tired – I still need who knows how long to fall asleep after I put my head down no matter how late that happens. So I’ve been trying to go to bed no later than midnight, knowing that I may not fall asleep until about 1…
I’ve always been able to run on less sleep than a lot of people, but that’s less true today. Like Ilya, I usually toss and turn for awhile after going to bed, even if I’m very tired. I rarely get to sleep before midnight, and 1 am or later is not unusual. Being self employed, I can often get in a 20-30 minute nap whenever I do lunch, but not always.
I avoid all nighters whenever possible these days, because towards the end of them or the next day I will simply make too many mistakes that will cause me to have to do even more work.
I usually get four to five hours a night, maybe a little more on the weekends (although then I’m apt to stay up later). After about two weeks of that, it catches up with me and I’ll try and fit in a nap while Logan’s down for his in the afternoon (if I’m lucky, he seems to think that he doesn’t need naps any more).
Like most of the people posting here, I can’t function properly without a good sleep anymore. Back in the day, I could go out, party all night, go home, shower, change and go to work. Nowadays, if I get 6 hours, I can manage for 1 day. If I go two nights with only 6 hours, I’m toast. Ideally, I like 9 hours of sleep a night, but I’m usually running on 7.5 to 8.
I spent my last two high school years sleeping 4-6 hours per night. It only improved to 6-8 or so in college. After college I spent a year sleeping 12 hours every night and caught all that up in one swell foop.
Nowadays I aim for 8, but often end up with less during the week. My best time for falling asleep is dawn, which is where I end up when nothing is going on. Then I’ll have to do something in the morning, and foom! Crankiness until I have time to catch it up on the weekend.
When it gets dark, I get tired. Winter is tough.