Lack of sleep impairs the functioning of certain parts of the brain. For example, there is an inhibition of neural processes in the parietal lobe, which can cause problems with reaction speed. And when the prefrontal cortex slows down, a person has difficulty formulating his thoughts and may have problems with his vision. Brain fatigue turns into a whole bunch of negative consequences.

The duration of sleep directly affects physical and mental activity. Maybe to become the best in your business, it's enough to sleep as much as the outstanding scientists, writers and politicians did? There is no definite answer to this question.

Einstein and Schopenhauer slept 10-12 hours a night. Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy and Charles Darwin each slept eight hours. Sigmund Freud and Vladimir Nabokov slept six hours a night. Slightly less rested Mozart and Margaret Thatcher (5 hours each), Napoleon Bonaparte and Voltaire (4 hours each). Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who practiced polyphasic sleep, are the record holders in terms of wakefulness.

There is no universal recipe. Sleep duration is like shoe size. Eight hours is good for most people, but it's not enough for some and a lot for others. To understand how much sleep you need, you can experiment.