No time for sleep: 7 great people with unusual daily routines

Everyone knows: to be awake and productive, an adult needs about 7-8 hours of sleep. However, many people who achieved great results and became famous used individual and sometimes incredible sleep techniques.

Leonardo da Vinci

The genius artist slept 15-20 minutes every four hours (about two hours a night in total). Nowadays this technique is called “multiphasic sleep”, but not many people are able to live this way of life.

Winston Churchill

Surprisingly, Churchill only needed five hours of sleep a night. He lay down at 3 am and got up at 8 am. However, every day between lunch and dinner, the Prime Minister drank a light whiskey and soda, and then went to take a nap for a couple of hours. Churchill worked half the night.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The French commander usually went to bed around midnight, then got up at 2 a.m., worked until 5 a.m. and went to bed again for a couple hours. Thus, Napoleon slept about four hours a day. Historians note that Bonaparte often did not sleep at all, suffering from insomnia.

Salvador Dali

Perhaps the most unusual way of waking up from sleep was invented by the great Spanish artist. He, like da Vinci, practiced “multiphase sleep”, but in order to wake up for sure, he came up with a strange but effective way. Before going to bed, Dali put a metal tray near the bed, and in his hands took a spoon. As soon as he fell asleep, his hands relaxed and the spoon fell – from the rumble of the artist woke up. According to him, this practice often gave him new ideas.

Honoré de Balzac

The writer went to bed at 6 pm and woke up at 1 am. Then sat down to work, and at 8 am lay down to sleep for an hour and a half. The rest of his time, of course, was devoted to work.

Charles Darwin

An integral part of waking up and going to sleep of the great scientist – a walk. He went to bed after midnight, but always woke up at 7 am. After rising, Darwin would go for a walk. In the evening, around 9 pm, Darwin allowed himself to nap for about 30 minutes, then again went for a walk.

Nikola Tesla

The famous physicist and scientist was obsessed with work, so sleep was a “waste of time” for him. He slept no more than three hours a night, usually 2 hours between 2 and 4 a.m., then napped for 20 minutes around noon.

We do not encourage you to follow any of these sleep techniques, but rather to get enough sleep and strike the right balance between sleep and wakefulness.