I try not to get much sleep during the day, it's best reserved for nights

5hours will make your body old fast... You need 7-8 min

I sleep A LOT. Whenever I'm awake, my brain tends to be very active continuously, which doesn't seem to be the case with most people, and basically I tire myself out a lot whenever I'm awake, so I need a lot of sleep to compensate.

Anyway, as much sleep as I can get. Often I try to aim for ten hours, but I try to get some sleep during the day if possible too.
I think most people can confirm that it isn't a case of laziness on my part.

It happens often enough that I don't reach that aim and I can handle merely a few hours a night quite well for a while too, but I've noticed that this changes my life in many, many ways.

If I am inspired to research something for example, I may well forget my health for a while.

Now I'm sick so I'm sleeping even more. Basically in bed all day for several days.

It's of course a bit trickier to find out how much of that time I am actually asleep though.

"Do you think that sleep (or lack thereof) is a significant factor in job/academic/athletic performance?"

Depends. If I choose to forget everything else, I think I can still perform well, but that would include forgetting my health. If I choose to be more sensible and keep my health and everything in mind, my performance will definitely drop.

After being awake for 3 days I did manage to sleep for over 30 hours. I wouldn't recommend it.

Usually I sleep for 7 hours or so, but it tends to be slightly longer in winter.

I just wrote an article for British Columbia Cancer Agency about sleep and sleeplessness. Interviewed a sleep therapist who noted that "8 hours of sleep" is just an average -- some people make do very well with 6, some really do need 10. And that this can change over your life.

She also said the single most effective way to get a good night's sleep is good sleep "hygiene". Use the bed only for sleep (and sex), don't read in it, don't watch TV in it, don't leave the light on for longer than it takes to get under the covers, and go to bed the same time every night.

I've been trying this about two weeks now and it makes a tremendous difference.

Latest research is that you need sleep to "clean" your brain of toxins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/goodnight-sleep-clean.html

I believe it can be beneficial to sleep during the day too, not just at night.

I generally get about six hours per night, and that's fine for me. Occasionally, I will have a power catchup night/morning where I sleep 14+. It's not uncommon for me to go very short sleep. When I was younger, I would be good to go for the day after 1.5 hours; now my body needs a 3.5 minimum.d

I can only survive the next day if I have something like 2 or less or if I have at least 7. If I do anything in between, I crash quickly. I can usually pull off 7 without a problem since I don't have any super early classes, but on weekends I'll be up till 5 or 6 and then roll through the next day without a problem.

Not getting enough sleep is a problem but I have more problems when I get too much sleep. I don't know how many people have that issue but I can't go over 9 hours unless I have a lazy day ahead of me.

I feel like there's a "sweet spot" for sleep - if I get less than 5 but more than 8, I'm more tired when I wake up than I was when I went to bed. I'm usually good on 6-7 but I'm a strong advocate of a 30 minute nap after work.

Coincidentally, a recent SYSK looked at fatal familiar insomnia:

http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/is-there-a-disease-that-kills-by-preventing-sleep/

Basically, dying from not being able to sleep.

Anything less than 6 and I'm a zombie. Anything more than 9 and I just don't bother getting up til about 5pm. So maybe once every couple of weeks I do that.

7.5 is optimal for me, though. And anything below 4 is just worse than none at all.

You mean less than 5 or more than 8?

@2WL.

No, I meant what I wrote. My sleep is basically like an imaginary number.

I used to go to bed between 10pm and midnight, nearly every night, and sleep fairly solidly for 7-8 hours. Despite this I still sometimes found myself feeling groggy in the mornings, unless I was able to sleep for more like 9-10 hours, and arise at about 10am, in which case I'd be bright and fresh the moment I hopped out of bed.

On six seperate occasions in the past 2 years, I have had to spend time in hospital overnight. In three of those cases, I was in hospital for a week or longer. Due to the treatment I was receiving, I had to be awoken 3-4 times overnight to receive injections, blood pressure checks, medication, etc. I am now pretty much done with hospital - my last spell in hospital overnight was in July/August.

I have found that hospital has completely changed my sleep patterns. I now find it almost impossible to go to sleep any earlier than 1am. I don't sleep as soundly, although I generally only wake up 2 or 3 times during the night. I often have to have a nap in the early evening, after work, when I usually feel exhausted. Mornings are difficult - I usually rise at 8.30am after about 7 hours sleep, and I feel groggy until about 11am. In the afternoon, I'm sharp, alert, and firing on all cylinders - indeed in the afternoon I find it easy to handle complex tasks or mental challenges I would struggle with in the morning. After a brief early evening nap, I continue to be sharp until about 1am when I start to get sleepy.

I feel for you, although I missed your story mostly since I wasn't active on the forum then apparently..

Do you rise at 8.30am because that's when you need to wake up to get to work in time or something?

Another interesting thing I just found out is that I am seemingly completely unaware of when/under what circumstances I am active on webdip. Right now I'm both sick and busy as hell and I'm wasting my time on the forum, so that makes me wonder under what 'circumstances' I don't go to webdip a lot..
Oh well, that's off-topic.

@ steephie: "Do you rise at 8.30am because that's when you need to wake up to get to work in time or something?"

Yes. I need to get to work between about 9.30am and 10am most mornings.

Well, if you'd want your old sleeping habits back, I would recommend working on that in a weekend or a bit longer. Basically make sure you're tired enough to fall asleep at around 10pm, or earlier for that matter..

Easier said than done of course, but if you're annoyed by your current habits, it's worth a shot to change it.

Intuition tells me you should wake up later before trying to achieve that, but that seems illogical so maybe not...

Yeah I'm useless. I guess my point is merely that you can probably get your old sleeping habits back somehow if you give that a shot.

I eliminated caffeine entirely and have been getting much better sleep while still feeling just as awake in the morning. I get about 5-6 hours a night.

Never started with caffeine myself, so can't cut down on that..

My issue is I don't have a regular schedule. My first class on Mondays and Wednesdays is 12 PM, my first on Tuesday and Thursday is 9:30 AM. So I usually get less sleep those days and try to make it up on Fridays and Saturdays...

Tonight for example I'll probably get about 4.5... but I'l sleep like 12 tomorrow night.

I can't wait to have a real schedule.

Personally, I quite like my 'schedule' of just sleeping whenever I'm tired, with the obvious exception of school (unless I sleep at school, often the most efficient way to spend your time at school anyway). I made sure that I have no fixed hours for my work, so if I want to sleep rather than work during the day I can, and if I want to work rather than sleep during the night I can as well.

It varies with everybody, but I went through over a year with getting under 5 hours sleep a day and it ruined my health. With chronic insomnia I'm still working to get back over 7 hours a night. It's been compared to getting severely drunk in how it affects concentration.

There is a significant difference between occasional not enough sleep and doing it for long periods that reduces mental alertness and can cause health problems. They are only recently doing clinical studies on long term sleep loss. It ages the body and it doesn't get better with sleeping more for a few nights.

Indeed, which brings us to the sleep debt mentioned in OP..

IMO, it's not a debt. All you can do is compensate, up to a point. For a few days, that's manageable, but I guess Randomizer is never really going to get that year back and it may well take a lot of time to get back to a suitable level for him as well..