[parliament32]

> I’ve always figured out that there 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute Arnold, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

[tachyonbeam]

AFAIK it's pretty well established in the literature that some people naturally just need less sleep. We're not all made the same, we have different genes. There's this saying that humans have 99% identical DNA. What this fails to convey is that you and me probably have different versions of the majority of our individual genes (even though they might differ by just a single letter of DNA). In other words, genetic variation in the human population is huge, and it does have a measurable impact on sleep, stamina, personality, etc.

I don't want to sound like a biological determinist, but It's not all about willing yourself to do amazing things, there is some amount of biological reality we have to deal with as well. Consider that now olympic sprint runner prospects get tested to know if they have fast twitch muscle fibers [0], and if they don't, they basically can't compete, they're considered not worth training. For some reason, people like to imagine that things like sleep and motivation are different, they forget that the brain is a physical organ.

[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/what-makes-the-perfe...