Sleep. We all need it, but no one wants to do it. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. Some people love their allotted time for sleeping. For others, it’s just a few hours a night
But depending on who you ask, either way can be successful, and healthful. Here are a bunch of famous, successful, or otherwise notable people and their weird sleeping habits.
Charles Dickens
He slept north to improve his creativity. He wrote facing north as well and believed that sleeping this way heightened his creativity. People that know about feng shui know NOT to sleep to the south, that the east is always the best way to face. And north? It’s the second best. And for Dicken’s, if sleeping facing north helped influence his creativity, than north it was. Especially because he supposedly suffered from insomnia.
Nikola Tesla
Two to three hours of sleep a night, that was it. Tesla says that he got more out of the day thanks to his limited sleep schedule. Tesla followed what is known as the Uberman sleep cycle in which you are to never sleep for more than two hours a day. It was once reported that he worked for 84 hours in a lab without any rest or sleep. “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success … Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything,” Tesla said.
Marissa Mayer
But can you catch up on sleep? Those who have studied it vary in their opinions. According to some, yes, you can catch up on sleep. Others say, “Nope,” once it’s gone. According to Yahoo’s CEO, she doesn’t sleep much. She is too busy working, sometimes clocking in as many as 130 hours into a work week. So when does she sleep? Well, she said she recharges every four months by taking week long vacations and sleeping. Well, we hope you get some sleep Mayer, you need it!
Leonardo da Vinci
Tesla isn’t the only one who tried out the Uberman sleep cycle, da Vinci subscribed to this style as well. Da Vinci preferred a more extreme version which was taking a 20-minute nap every four hours. Well this albeit weird sleep schedule may have given the artist/inventor/scientist more awake time during his days, it would have made it hard to work on and complete long-term projects.
Stephen King
According to King himself, “I brush my teeth, I wash my hands. Why would anybody wash their hands before they go to bed? I don’t know. And the pillows are supposed to be pointed a certain way. The open side of the pillowcase is supposed to be pointed in toward the other side of the bed. I don’t know why.” This is how he slept, what he liked, and how he liked it.
Eminem
Weird, ghetto, and a little off, Eminem’s sleep style doesn’t really surprise me at all. Well others use dark shades on their windows to keep out the light, Eminem uses tin foil on his windows to get a better sleep. Conventional? No. But does it work? It would seem so. He is also a fan of white noise coming from the speakers and the telly (HA, has he suddenly become English now, too?) This routine helps him sleep better no matter which time zone he is in.
Matt Mullenweg
This American entrepreneur and web developer is also a follower of the Uberman sleeping method. Mullenweg made his fortune by creating the popular internet blogging platform, WordPress. He sleeps in 40 minute increments each, about six times per day. That leaves just a short two and a half hours of awake time between each napping period. Other people swear by this but it would be hard to follow this way of sleeping, and hard to get anything done. Just saying.
Donald Trump
AKA our president. On a typical night it is said that Trump only sleeps three to four hours, and sometimes as little as 90 minutes. After waking up between 6:00 and 6:30 AM, Trump reads through a stack of newspaper clippings about himself. According to a source, most of the time Trump doesn’t even read through the pages, he just likes to look at his name in print. But anyhow, can we talk about his coloring? Something is weird, something is off, and the man just doesn’t look right, (or good.) Maybe he needs a new sleep schedule and a new morning routine.
Arianna Huffington
As an advocate for getting a good night’s sleep these days, Huffington turns her bedroom into a “slumber palace.” Before bed, she turns off her electronics, including her phone, and charges them outside of her bedroom. She takes a hot bath infused with Epsom Salt and lavender oil, to help calm her after the stress of the day. Huffington sleeps in only garments that are meant for sleeping in, in example, no worn out boxer shorts here. And to lull her to sleep, she reads poetry and philosophy
Winston Churchill
Churchill took a two hour nap everyday. The prime minister would have a weak wiskey and soda before his 5 PM nap time. According to him, he could get one and a half days worth of work done every 24 hours with this short siesta. He was known for working through the night and being a night owl. Because of his odd sleep schedule, he would hold War Cabinet meetings in his bath.
For me a solid 6 hours, at least, is pretty much a must. And naps if my body will have it. How do you sleep? Are your sleep habits “weird” like these people?