The winter gets longer and deeper, colder and snowier. Some of us are adopting the seasonal habits of the Maine bear, sleeping as much as possible until St. Patrick’s Day.
I was never much of a go-getter even in in my younger, summery days. Now that I have passed age 75 (honest to God) and the temperature sinks, I value every minute spent in my queen-size bed with the Charter Club Pima cotton, 300-plus thread count sheets. (Never scrimp on sheets). I go to bed at the usual time, about 10 p.m. (when the New York Times releases its daily crossword puzzle) to maybe 11 p.m. if another World War II feature is on the History Channel. I take my beloved iPhone to bed and drift off listening to podcasts of Tony Kornheiser or Bill Simmons, an official Red Sox and Patriots fan.
But getting up is the problem. Working for the Bangor Daily News for 30 years, the alarm was always set for 7 a.m. I am not claiming that I always got up, but at least I was awake. I still wake up at 6:30 a.m. but I roll over and tune in WFAN in New York City to listen to “Boomer” Esiason and Craig Carton. They run until 10 a.m. Often I have listened to the entire show between the Charter Club sheets, dozing. I hate to admit it, but the rising time has often slipped until 10:30 a.m. Then the only reason I get out of bed is the Rock City Dark Star coffee waiting in the kitchen.
That adds up to 12 hours, more or less, sleeping and just lying there.
Occasionally, I wonder if I am wasting my life, falling behind all those successful, go-go people we are supposed to emulate. Not many of them are getting 12 hours. We lean on new friend Natassia De La Guerre, who has investigated the problem for PixelVulture.com.
De La Guerre (sounds like an alias) said that unique sleeping patterns were found among go-getters Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Tim Cook, Richard Branson, Ellen DeGeneres, Mark Zuckerberg and Winston Churchill.
The sleep pattern of Bill Gates is similar to that of Barack Obama, who both wake up at 7 a.m., but Obama stays up one hour later and goes to bed at 1 a.m., she found. I wonder what keeps Obama up until 1 a.m. Is that the only time the White House goes quiet and his national, family and personal demands finally die down?
The only people on the De La Guerre study who get a solid eight hours sleep every night are Moz founder Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Ellen DeGeneres, Jayne-Anne Gadhia and Buffer’s Leo Widrich. Widrich and Fishkin both get late starts, only waking up at 9 a.m. They can’t be too famous. The only one I have ever heard of is the fabulous Ellen.
The people who function on the least amount of sleep (and are probably robots) include Richard Branson, who only sleeps between five and six hours a day, and Google’s Marissa Mayer who only sleeps between four and six hours a day. I believe these people are shortening their lives, even if they are successful. There are many early risers as well, with Tim Cook, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Benjamin Franklin all waking up before 6 a.m.
The most bizarre sleep pattern comes from Winston Churchill, who slept from 3 to 8 a.m. It always appeared to me that “Winnie” was always having a better time than anyone else. Maybe it was the brandy and cigars, not the sleep pattern.
According to homearena.co.uk (they sell mattresses), the average amount of sleep per night for “successful people” is 6.6 hours. Not even close to my “Daily 12.”
Turns out, the difference between these Type A Personalities and “normal people“ is pretty negligible. A 2013 Gallup poll tells us that the “successful” people get 12 minutes less sleep than the 6.8 hours the average American sleeps every night.
So it appears hard to link “success” to any particular sleep pattern. Both the successful people and the average Joes are getting less sleep on average than what experts typically recommend, which is seven to nine hours for adults, Gallup says.
Gallup reports that in 1942, the average American used to get 7.9 hours of sleep, an hour more than today. About 43 percent in the poll said they would “feel better” if they got more sleep. Older Americans (over 65) said they sleep more than seven hours a night.
Gallup had no figures on 12-hour hibernations.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.