6-7 hours of sleep

Sooo I asked some PROMYS people in the confessions bot what they think about sleeping.

Maggie Shen
whoever submitted this i hope your in pst because otherwise its pretty ironic of you to be posting this when u should be sleeping 😭

but fr don’t sacrifice sleep to work you’ll be super cranky and depressed and less productive in general. (like when u do math on little sleep u generally can’t think straight) if anything id say those successful ppl u mentioned are successful in spite of their terrible sleep schedule, not because it. also sleep deprivation can cause long term health effects like impaired mental function, weakened immune system, depression, anxiety and a whole host of other things that are very very bad for u. doctors recommend 8 hours of sleep a night and they generally know what they’re doing!!

Akiva
Three hours is insane wtf

Hussein
even i was like what's wrong with people lol

Isaac Cheng

i slept 8-9 hrs almost every night for both my junior and senior years, and I feel like I was able to do a lot (get into promys, get into college) precisely because I was sharp from getting sleep
I bet if you ask a lot of people here who are going to top colleges, they also got sleep

Neil
Also, as much as we like to think it, we are really not productive after 1am at the latest, so it's always better to sleep and wake up rested and work (for the record I have an actually healthy sleep schedule outside of promys)

AJ
Everyone else has already said the same, but please do not skip sleep to get more stuff done. I think there might be a selection bias in your anecdotal evidence: people who get less sleep tend to be more vocal about it.
Personally, I try to get at least 7 hours (for college, at least). As has been suggested, at a certain point in the night you just stop being productive, and it is a better use of your time to just go to sleep.
I will also say that, at least in my experience, it is easier to get good sleep in college than in high school. Admittedly, there seems to be something structural about the incentives of high school that causes people to sleep less, so it is absolutely not your fault if you feel like you need to skip sleep. That being said, please sleep. Doing good work and staying healthy is more important than “accomplishing” lots of things.

In short, no, it’s not worth it. You’ll be miserable. Being miserable is bad. And sad. And we don’t like being sad. I got through high school with a decent amount of sleep, and at least I hope to believe I accomplished something or the other. You definitely can too.

Henry Cohn
One thing to keep in mind is that when people brag about themselves or hero worship others, it often says more about their mindset than the actual facts. For example, there’s often some cherry picking of extreme cases. If someone says they work 120 hours per week or get only 3 hours of sleep a night, I am totally willing to believe that they may have periodically done this. However, I’m skeptical that they have managed to achieve these statistics on average in a sustainable and productive way. (People are different, and it’s not impossible, but I don’t think it happens as often as people say it has happened.)

David Speyer
Personally, I found that it was easier and more rewarding to keep a good sleep schedule once I got to graduate school. In high school and college, there are tons of deadlines which are important but, in the end, arbitrary, so I was always staying up late in order to get things done. Moreover, even if I started an assignment early, my classmates never did! So I had to work late in order to work with them.
Once I got to grad school, the assignments were generally long term, and people were reasonable about deadline flexibility. I've heard the same thing from people who went into the workforce. And it quickly became clear that I could get a lot more done by going to sleep at a regular time.
Of course, then I had kids 🙂 ...

Isaaac R
just adding that i sleep 7-10 hours per night, feel like i can't sustain myself on only 6 hours. even 7 i can only do for a couple weeks, i need 8-9 to feel rested.
sacrificing sleep doesnt ever help me long term

Stephen Wu
your achievements are a function of both how much you work and how productively you work
even if you work for way longer, you will nbever work productively on 3 hours of sleep
it's better to get a healthy amount so you can study while energized and happy

Taran
even if you're less productive, be ok with that!!!
being happy is the goal, and while there are times in your life that you have to sacrifice short-term happiness for long-term happiness, this is not the case with sleep. actually, getting enough sleep is the long-term happiness, while feeling productive is the short-term happiness.