[dota_fanatic]

> My sleep statistics tells me that I slept an average of 5:25 hours over the last 7 days, 5:49 hours over the last 30 days, and 5:57 over the last 180 days hours, meaning that I’m awake for 18 hours per day instead of 16.5 hours. I usually sleep 5.5-6 hours during the night and take a nap a few times a week when sleepy during the day.

> This means that I’m gaining 33 days of life every year. 1 more year of life every 11 years. 5 more years of life every 55 years.

> Why are people not all over this?

Because that's not how humans work. You're gaining 33 days of being not-asleep in sum per year. More accurately, you're getting however many more minutes per wakeful period. And gaining minutes of being not-asleep per day is very different from "gaining days of life every year". Life != being awake. Things are happening during sleep. Useful things.

Personally, I spent many years doing what you're recommending when I was younger. Felt low-level sleepy all the time. Used caffeine off-and-on to blunt the effect. Now I've gotten into a good enough homeostasis that I don't need alarms and I don't oversleep. I never feel sleepy except for the moments before falling asleep at night or on the rare occasions where I have to wake up early. I love sleep now. I protect it and it protects me.

The quality of a day depends on how it was spent. The quality of a life is the summation of all those days. Adding 30 minutes to each day's wakeful period is not some huge gain in efficiency like you're making it out to be. And for me, gaining thirty more minutes actually makes the quality of the rest of the minutes in that day worse. I low-key despise society for making me think I needed to do more such that sacrificing my sleep and normal alertness for more time spent awake was a good trade.

I recommend looking into the concept of healthspan. Optimize for area under the curve, not time spent awake.

[guzey]

So what you are saying is that, just like me, in your 20s you were optimize for getting shit done and now, being older, you optimize for feeling good and don't care about doing as much and think that optimizing for doing earlier was a mistake for you. This is reasonable!

[dota_fanatic]

No. I am able to do much more now, now that I respect the signals my body is sending. Sometimes I have to force things, reality demands it, but generally I work with my body on any given day, not against it. The increase quality and amount of work is undeniable, generally and on average.

I can only imagine how much more capable I would be if I had had a better relationship with sleep and my body in general when I was younger, so the benefits of those behaviors could have compounded over a longer time frame.