Sleeping Patterns of Successful People

That's what this piece from NPR's web site purports to show us. I'm not sure what their definition of "success" is exactly, but the report on sleep habits of the 21 people they select as owning that descriptor satisfies curiosity about "how the other half sleeps."

The group's average sleep times vary significantly. The late Winston Churchill got about five hours of sleep each night. President Obama sleeps from 1am to 7am each day, six hours. Virgin chief Richard Branson gets 5 to 6 hours of sleep every night. A few NPR looks at get the usually recommended eight hours of sleep at night.

From the article:

The average amount of sleep per night from these successful people is 6.6 hours.
How does that compare to those of us who are not world leaders or titans of industry?

Turns out, the difference is pretty negligible — the "successful" people get 12 minutes less than the average American. According to this 2013 Gallup poll, the average American gets 6.8 hours of sleep every night.

So it appears hard to link "success" to any particular sleep pattern. Both the successful people and the average Joes are getting less sleep on average than what experts typically recommend, which is seven to nine hours for adults...

I've always been a guilty night owl. I love getting up really early and being productive. But I also love to stay up late and seem to do so even when I've only gotten a small amount of sleep the night before. So, when push comes to shove, I more often stay up late than get up early, which I've never really liked about myself. It appears to be how I'm wired though, as is true with most of my siblings, though one goes to bed very early each night.

The article contains a few other interesting tidbits about all Americans' sleeping habits. Read the whole thing.