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.
Nikola Tesla allegedly lived off just two hours of sleep a day. The phrase you can sleep when you're dead comes from a 1976 rock song but today is more commonly applied to the meaning behind da Vinci's and Tesla's habits than anything else. You can sleep later because you're busy now.
Inventor Nikola Tesla never slept for more than two hours a day. Tesla got more out of the day with his limited sleep schedule. Like Da Vinci, Telsa also followed the Uberman sleep cycle and claimed to never sleep for more than two hours a day and reportedly once worked for 84 hours in a lab without any rest or sleep.
Psychology Today reported that intelligent people are likely to be nocturnal beings, with those with a higher IQ going bed later on both weeknights and weekends.
Did you know that insomnia is more common for those who have a high IQ. Intelligent people have a harder time switching off their brain. So, maybe you are just too clever to snooze! Don't panic, high IQ or not, cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia can help you.
It's common knowledge that sleep is good for your brain – and Einstein took this advice more seriously than most. He reportedly slept for at least 10 hours per day – nearly one and a half times as much as the average American today (6.8 hours).
Elon Musk says he's upped his sleep to 6 hours per night—and that his old routine hurt his brain.
Both Da Vinci and Tesla were opposed to the idea that sleep was important to their health and instead viewed it as an adversary to their productivity. In short, they believed sleep was a waste of time and they were not alone in this thinking.
Leonardo da Vinci's sleep schedule included 20-minute naps every four hours. Da Vinci followed an extreme form of a polyphasic sleep schedule called the Uberman sleep cycle, which consists of 20-minute naps every four hours.
Most Geniuses Perfected the Power Nap
That's pretty much true. Since a lot of them tend to believe that it is absolutely imperative to stay ahead, they seem to think that sleeping deprives them of this opportunity. Hence, they'd reduce the time they rest at night in order to have more functional, waking hours.
Bill Gates' sleep schedule
I knew I wasn't as sharp when I was operating mostly on caffeine and adrenaline, but I was obsessed with my work, and I felt that sleeping a lot was lazy,” he wrote on his blog. Today, Gates regularly gets at least seven hours of sleep per night.
How much sleep did Beethoven get? Between 1822 and 1827, Beethoven had a pretty balanced schedule. He got 8 hours of sleep, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. After a light breakfast (coffee), he'd start a nice 8-hour workday of composing from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Although the Uberman sleep cycle is technically a type of sleep schedule, it may not be the best one for regulating your natural circadian rhythm. That's because it's based on random periods of sleep, requiring you to sleep during the day and be awake and active at night.
But the majority manage to get at least 6 hours, as you can see in the list below detailing the sleep habits of 10 highly successful people: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: 6 hours (1am — 7am) Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: 7 hours (9:30pm — 4:30am) Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft: 7 hours (12am — 7am)
Extraordinary minds such as Leonardo's tend to have a quirky lifestyle choices behind them — and Da Vinci's bizarre lifestyle choice was how he slept. Da Vinci slept for a total of two hours per day, in which he took 20 minute naps roughly every 4 hours, known as the Uberman cycle.
During his time in office, Churchill adopted a biphasic sleep cycle, snoozing for five hours each night and then topping this up with a two-hour nap in the late afternoon. Incidentally, the biphasic sleep cycle is also popular in warmer climes around the globe – the most famous example being the siesta.
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.
Nikola Tesla
Born during a lightning storm in 1856, Tesla had an IQ range from 160 to 310. He's known as the inventor of the Tesla coil and alternating current machinery.
In a post on the newly launched Threads app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that he's mastered what we all dream of—getting about seven to eight hours of sleep per night. “Really dialed in my sleep with Eight Sleep and Oura,” he wrote, referring to a smart mattress and smart ring meant to help us catch our Zzzs.
On average, he gets between four and five hours of sleep per night. Want to know how he manages? Keep reading to find out more about Donald Trump's sleep schedule.
What is Elon Musk 5 minute rule? Elon Musk 5 minute rule is one of the best time management techniques. It makes you divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing one or more tasks, allowing you to have a concrete schedule that lays out what you will work on and when.
Jeff Bezos has revealed his optimal sleep time in order to be the best he can at his job. The Amazon mogul's success is seen as the ultimate goal for entrepreneurs. "I get eight hours of sleep a night.
Ancient Sleeping Patterns
During and before the 15th Century, we used to sleep in two shorter periods over 12 hours. Due to a lack of artificial lighting and candlelight, our ancient ancestors went to bed at dusk for around four hours, woke in the middle of the night and were active, then slept again until dawn.
The longest time a human being has gone without sleep is 11 days and 25 minutes. The world record was set by … American 17-year-old Randy Gardner in 1963.