Anyway, I get by through a combination of sneaking naps, trying not to sabotage myself by eating/living poorly, and catching up when I can.
I suspect the people in this study do the same. They probably doze when on public transportation, or trying to get the kids to sleep, you'll lay down with them and sleep a little. These stolen moments add up. Also, learning to recognize the signs of mental fatigue - if you can't get rest, then, you have to slow down and double check everything, not get irritable, and defer major decisions.
I can write new applications (atrociously) on basically no sleep, so I'm pretty skeptical "sit at this desk and enter these things" swings one way or the other (or even has much of an ability to quality check - at least the compiler will yell at me when I'm egregiously wrong).
I'd be far more interested if these people could be trusted to run heavy machinery on that schedule, or engage in a creative or hands on task like carpentry or welding. I suspect the results would be quite different.
Same here. While writing the GP comment, I considered using that exact example as something that I wouldn't expect to be heavily impacted by moderate sleep deprivation.
The nights there are extremely warm too. I wonder if that's a factor in ensuring that 5.5 hours of sleep is no worse than 8?
As a side note, the study also says that short afternoon naps increased productivity.