Me too. I only feel at my best if I'm consistently getting 8 hours. A few days of 7 hours and I start to feel overly tired. Turn that down to 6 hours and I turn into an awful person.

My wife hardly ever sleeps more that 6-6.5 hours so she basically gets 2 extra hours a day compared to me. This has been true for me as long as I can remember (36 year old male)

Is there any difference in your level of fitness? I need a lot of sleep as well.

The more physically active/fit you are the longer you have to sleep.

sources: http://hackerella.com/sleep-challenge/

https://www.fatiguescience.com/blog/infographic-why-athletes...

You should start measuring the quality of your sleep using apps like Sleep Cycle. I used to be exactly the same way. Then I realized that the reason I was sleeping for 9-10 hours was because my sleep was "shallow" and kept getting interrupted. It all changed drastically after I optimized my sleeping environment: totally dark, 68 degrees year around, appropriate mattress type for my sleeping position, etc.

Now I can get by comfortably with 6-7 hours of sleep.

Apps can also wake you up at the right time, as opposed to during deep sleep. That makes it easier to wake up as well.

As an alternative to ear plugs, perhaps also consider noise _replacement_ instead (eg. vs. noise _elimination).

I use an app that plays various rain sounds. I have it linked to speakers via Bluetooth (and I have a 3.5mm headphone-jack-type extension audio cable that I've run to my bedside table as an option, if I'm feeling picky about the sound quality of my rain ).

It's very relaxing, and blocks most outdoor sounds. I live in NZ, and the houses here are usually pretty thin-walled and consequently offer almost no sound deadening. This mostly-fixes/avoids that.

Perhaps you don't like rain, and so different sounds might be appropriate... I don't like anything else really apart from maybe low volume white noise, but that's me... but yeah, regardless of which sounds you pick, the general approach is worth trying!

I always just used a box fan, but the apps are a good idea.

Yes, using ear plugs more consistently would likely help improve quality. Housing quality where I live (NZ) is abysmal, and you hear all outside noises very clearly. It's half between living in a well built house and living in a tent.

Would you recommend Sleep Cycle the most? Do they require the phone physically on your bed or nearby?

After an update about a year ago, it only requires being nearby (nightstand works for me) and uses sound to do the sensing.

Cool, I'll give it a try tonight!

I'm fond of Sleep As Android

I will admit, I am very lucky in that regard. Just comparing against the recommended amount of sleep, I get an extra 14 hours a week. And I can actually function quite well on less, but not sustained (and never deliberately try to reach that state, but bouts of insomnia have forced me to learn this).

I do tend to sleep in on the weekends though ("sleep" isn't quite right, more like lazily stay in bed until 0900 or so while drifting in and out).

I do this. Almost exactly. Asleep at 11 pm, up at 5:30. Lazy on weekends.

It's a double-edged sword. I go to sleep between 12 and 12:45 every night, and wake up almost exactly six hours later without an alarm. It's great when waking up for work, it's really irritating on the weekends that I want to sleep in on.

You can get used to it. In college, I had a semester where I was taking 6 classes, half of them project heavy grad classes. I only pulled one all nighter (that was on me) that semester, but I was regularly getting 5-6h of sleep when it wasn't Friday or Saturday. After a few weeks, it wasn't that bad until spring break came around. I got used to getting 8h again, so I had to readapt back to 6h.

The person was also exhausted every day, by their own admission. I feel pity, not jealousy.

I was exhausted mentally, not physically, from work. Which is why I've been able to maintain that and add in 2 hours (average) gym time each weeknight. Applying the same analysis to work allowed me to better manage those 8 hours a day as well, so my mental exhaustion from that almost entirely stopped.

Though I initially saw an increase in my time sleeping (to about 7 hours) when I started (and now, since I took a break out of laziness). After about 3-4 weeks, my body gets better conditioned to the level of effort and I go back to about 6 hours of sleep a night.

For context, my exercising is: 2x5k/week (~0.5 hour each), 2x1.5 hour BJJ class, 2x1 hour wrestling, 2x1 hour BJJ, 2x1.25 hour soccer games. So roughly 10.5 hours a week. Very physically exhausting to jump back into that full schedule, though I find the fatigue remarkably satisfying (knowing that it's been earned).

I used to make it on 6 hours a night, easily.

Then I started college and it went up to 8, for some reason.

Recently I stopped drinking. I'm back to 6.

In my experience, every beer adds 1 hour of sleep.

In my experience, this only happens to me is it is more than 2 beers, later than 10pm in the evening :)