Although I could have expressed myself better, you still quoted me out of context. I was particularly talking about people dealing with less sleep on a relatively small timescale (less than 3 months). I'm choosing the 3 month window because it replicates the length of a college term and greatly reduces the risk of burnout (which I don't think is as big of an issue in college as in industry, because typical college schedules give at least a few weeks off after each term).
Are there any studies that compare how much people can done in a few months on different sleep schedules? I'm imagining some sort of cognitive task (like reading books and passing a comprehension test, or working through all the proofs in a math book) where the goal of the participants in the experiment is to accomplish said task as many times as possible in a fixed time period. This would be very difficult to design because one needs to decide on cognitive difficulty for the task (if the task was very easy, then less sleep = more time would almost certainly help) and have roughly equivalent ability between the 2 groups. This study wouldn't capture dealing with context switches or retention of information; just how much can be done in a fixed time period.
As far as I know, such a study doesn't exist. Anecdotally, I've seen many people make the decision to trade sleep for more time even while working on cognitively difficult tasks. Personally, I feel like I accomplished more during my terms in school than I could have sleeping 7+ hours/night.
On the other hand, I acknowledge long term sleep deprivation is not good for long term health, and I've personally seen my ability to run with intensity suffer during periods of low sleep.
In summary, I don't doubt the long term effects of low sleep on health, I slightly doubt the negative long term effects of sleep on productivity (know people who have been doing uberman for years and swear by it), and I heavily doubt that people can't be more productive over <3 month window by sleeping less than the recommended 8 hours per day.
Those studies have been performed several times [1][2][3][4]; most of them indicate that moderate sleep deprivation (<6 hours) produces the same amount of cognitive impairment as being legally drunk. Many of them also show that people are unaware that their cognitive function is impaired when sleep-deprived: they may feel like they're productive, but their actual performance is riddled with errors that then need to be corrected.
Are there any studies that compare how much people can done in a few months on different sleep schedules? I'm imagining some sort of cognitive task (like reading books and passing a comprehension test, or working through all the proofs in a math book) where the goal of the participants in the experiment is to accomplish said task as many times as possible in a fixed time period. This would be very difficult to design because one needs to decide on cognitive difficulty for the task (if the task was very easy, then less sleep = more time would almost certainly help) and have roughly equivalent ability between the 2 groups. This study wouldn't capture dealing with context switches or retention of information; just how much can be done in a fixed time period.
As far as I know, such a study doesn't exist. Anecdotally, I've seen many people make the decision to trade sleep for more time even while working on cognitively difficult tasks. Personally, I feel like I accomplished more during my terms in school than I could have sleeping 7+ hours/night.
On the other hand, I acknowledge long term sleep deprivation is not good for long term health, and I've personally seen my ability to run with intensity suffer during periods of low sleep.
In summary, I don't doubt the long term effects of low sleep on health, I slightly doubt the negative long term effects of sleep on productivity (know people who have been doing uberman for years and swear by it), and I heavily doubt that people can't be more productive over <3 month window by sleeping less than the recommended 8 hours per day.