It is vain for you to rise up early, to take rest late, to eat the bread of [anxious] toil—for He gives [blessings] to His beloved in sleep. – Psalm 127:2, Amplified Bible (AMP)

I have the utmost admiration for people who can operate off of very little sleep. I’m not talking about the folks who can survive an occasional night of short rest. I’m talking about the folks who regularly function with only 4-5 hours of sleep per night. I don’t know how they do it, but I can’t. I’ve tried and tried and tried. Each time I try, I end up with the same results: slurred speech, lack of concentration, and crankiness.

For years I felt guilty about my inability to stay up late and rise up early, equating such with laziness. Although the Bible does equate sleeping too much with slothfulness (Proverbs 24:33), the Bible does not equate sleeping the right amount with laziness. As with all things in life, God created us to have a balance when it comes to our nightly rest, and although there are those special few whose “balance” consists of minute amounts of sleep, most people find “balance” in the proverbial 7-8 hours of sleep. For example, Fast Company, a magazine dedicated to helping business people become better at their work, recently reported on the sleep schedules of some of history’s most productive people. As Fast Company reports:

The bedtimes and rising times of history’s greatest minds are inventively illustrated in this New York infographic based on Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. The infographic seems to debunk the myth that geniuses stay up through the wee hours working manically, and that you’re more creative when you’re tired–most of these 27 luminaries got a wholesome eight hours a night.

Among the list of productive people were:

• Beethoven
• Benjamin Franklin
• Mozart
• Charles Dickens
• John Milton

The point? Don’t be fooled into thinking that enjoying a good night’s rest is a sign of being a slackard. God designed most of us to enjoy between seven and eight hours of sleep each night, and by cheating ourselves of such, we risk our creativity, our productivity, and our health. Sure, there will be times when we will need to pull all-nighters in order to meet deadlines. Sure, there will be short stretches of nights when 4-6 hours of sleep might be required to complete pressing projects. But these should be the exception, not the rule.

If you are one of those special few who can function well with little sleep, more power to you!  God has blessed you in a special way. But, for the rest of us, we need to realize that 7-8 hours of sleep is just fine, for:

It is vain for you to rise up early, to take rest late, to eat the bread of [anxious] toil—for He gives [blessings] to His beloved in sleep.