I'm not sure I'm more productive on 8 than 6 hours' sleep - is there any way to verify this? I'd even pay good money to find out the optimal amount of sleep for me.
Set up some experiments using http://www.quantified-mind.com/ to see whether there's any difference in your cognitive performance when you've been sleeping for 6 hours vs. for 8. Practice the tests a few times, then start a custom experiment with your sleep variable in there. Alternate back and forth between each, maybe a week at a time, for a few weeks–test at the same time of day each day. Hit the Data Minding and see whether there's any perceptible difference in performance.
(Disclaimer: I wanted this to exist, so I helped Yoni build it.)
That would be interesting to find out. I feel pretty refreshed after about 6 or 7 hours. I'm sure everyone's slightly different. It might depend on how active one is during the day too. If you ride your bike 10 miles to work and back every day, I'm sure you'd want/need more sleep than someone who works from home.
