However, the average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night to function at their best. So, the idea that smart people sleep less may be a myth for most mortals and should not be used as an excuse for skimping on sleep.
Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa and Study Magazine pinpointed further by saying that individuals in their 20s with a normal IQ tended to go to sleep at around 12:10 a.m., while those with a lower IQ went to bed at 11:41 p.m. Those labeled “very bright” hit the sack at 12:29 a.m.
Most Geniuses Perfected the Power Nap
Hence, they'd reduce the time they rest at night in order to have more functional, waking hours. Instead, they'd take advantage of the so-called “power nap”. Both Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison were famous advocates of this principle.
The macrostructure of sleep has a small but consistent correlation with intelligence, with possible nonlinear effects. Biological and social factors contribute to the relationship between sleep macrostructure and intelligence.
Science supports laziness
The data found that those with a high IQ got bored less easily, leading them to be less active and spend more time engaged in thought.
Albert Einstein is said to have slept 10 hours per night, plus regular daytime naps. Other great achievers, inventors, and thinkers – such as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton – are said to have slept between two and four hours per day.
But when the researchers looked at the MRIs, the results got even more interesting: Not only do frequent daydreamers do better on IQ tests, they also have brains that appear more efficient in brain scans.
Einstein Slept Only 3 Hours a Year.
Studies have shown that people with higher IQs are likely to deviate from familiar evolutionary traits, such as circadian rhythms. Night owls who opt to wake up in the later hours of the day and stay awake until the wee small hours of the morning may be exhibiting a form of evolution.
Musk wasn't a “chill, normal dude,” as he once joked on “Saturday Night Live.” Mr. Musk has said he usually goes to sleep around 3 a.m. and typically gets six hours of shut-eye before waking and immediately checking his phone for any new emergencies.
He would sleep an average of 10 hours a night as well as taking daytime naps. One of the most famous inventors on our planet, Nikola Tesla, was quite the opposite of Einstein. He slept only a couple of hours a night and compensated for his lack of sleep with power naps throughout the day.
This colorful brain image is like a map of mental speed. The bright spaghetti structures represent the pathways connecting different brain cells. This DTI brain scan shows more of the brain's wiring.
A messy desk and intelligence go hand in hand.
You swear a lot and stay awake late? Look, if you also tend to leave a bit of a mess behind, there's good news for you. A study by the University of Minnesota suggests, that the messy desk of geniuses is actually linked to their intelligence.
Just like in any other activity, having a high IQ is a big boost and helps a lot, but its not neccesary to play chess. And it goes both ways. Just because you have high IQ it doesn't mean you will be great chess player. People with high IQ tend to be better at almost everything they try compared with regular folks.
Is good memory an indicator of intelligence? Essentially, yes, but not in the way you may think. Short-term memory storage is linked to greater signs of intelligence as measured in IQ tests. But having perfect recall isn't necessarily correlated with high intelligence.
Those with an IQ of over 125 tended to go to bed around 12:30 a.m. and wake up around 8:00 a.m. on weekdays, and go to bed around 1:45 a.m. and wake up around 11:00 a.m. on weekends. Those of normal intelligence tended to sleep from 12:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and from 1:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. on weekends.
For da Vinci's possible adoption of this practice, Claudio Stampi writes in his 1992 book, "Why We Nap": "One of his secrets, or so it has been claimed, was a unique sleep formula: he would sleep 15 minutes out of every four hours, for a daily total of only 1.5 hours of sleep.
Less sleep lowers IQ scores and grades
According to Coren, scores on intelligence tests decline cumulatively on each successive day that you sleep less than you normally sleep. The daily decline is approximately one IQ point for the first hour of sleep loss, two for the next, and four for the next.
Most psychologists now believe that there are no significant sex differences in general intelligence, although ability in particular types of intelligence does appear to vary slightly on average. While some test batteries show slightly greater intelligence in males, others show slightly greater intelligence in females.