It’s difficult to function on little sleep, yet it is common for many people–even the norm for them. When I’m functioning on little sleep, I need plenty (and I mean plenty) of coffee to keep me going throughout the day. It’s as if my faculties are lagging while I’m getting things done on autopilot. It takes practice.
Lack of sleep can be caused by bad habits such as staying up late to watch TV or toying around on the phone. Or it can be the fact that someone just has a hard time falling asleep even though they’re trying to sleep early.
It’s said that we need something like 8 hours per day to get the proper amount of rest. Easier said than done, of course, unless someone sticks to schedule that allots them the 8 hours of sleep they need.
In my novel Rogue Experiment, a character said something like they didn’t want to sleep because there was so much to do in the day. I used to tell myself at night to turn everything off at night (even if I was working) and go to bed. How rarely did I do this, even though I knew I should. But I eventually decided to get things done early in the day instead of pushing my goals into the evening.
Overtime, I found myself not needing to stay up, since the work was already done.
Fallton Havenstonne 