You need 8 hours and 36 minutes of sleep for optimal performance
From the Wall Street Journal:
One of the most influential studies of human performance, conducted by professor K. Anders Ericsson, found that top performers slept 8 hours and 36 minutes per day. The average American, for comparison, gets just 6 hours and 51 minutes of sleep on weeknights.
You are simply a different person when you operate on insufficient sleep. And it shows. If you do not get enough sleep, it can lead to a cascade of negative events. You achieve less at work, skip regular exercise, and eat poorly.
Amen.
Eugene Chan and 
Eugene Eric Kim are discussing.
Eugene Eric Kim 3:43 pm on December 20, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We used to do these exhaustive debriefs at Groupaya, where we would pick every single possible nit about our performance. One of the patterns I noticed over time was that our performance greatly suffered when one or more of us didn’t get enough sleep the night before, were sick, or skipped breakfast.
It sounds incredibly obvious, and yet the reality was that we were prioritizing the nits over simple fundamentals like making sure we ate before a day-long meeting. (This was my biggest problem. I’m a notorious breakfast skipper.) I’m willing to bet that this translates into the average person’s work performance in general.
The cultural shift that needs to happen is a greater emphasis on taking care of yourself (a variation of Ground Rule #1) as a means to better work performance.
Eugene Chan 5:40 pm on December 20, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
As i get older (and maybe wiser), I’m learning that the fundamentals are more and more about doing the right things, not just doing things right. Having run a marathon or two, the comparison is apt: recovery takes longer and is just as important as training and build up.