What if sleep was optional?

I have been through several periods of debilitating sleep deprivation. 2-3 hours per night and still had expectations to be fully functional during the day type thing. These were short lived periods for the most part – a week or so at a time. Because of something I wrote yesterday, I started wondering what would happen if sleep was optional?

At the end of any of these sleep deprived periods, I was shot, flat out. Cranky, irritable, couldn’t think straight, sometimes could barely speak without tripping over my own tongue. But what would happen – how would life be different – if our bodies didn’t require a certain amount of rest to function properly long term? What if I could take a 20 minute power nap twice a day and be optimally functional the rest of the time? No grogginess, no snippyness. Just normal you on minimal sleep?

I would imagine there would have to be some trade off if this were a reality. Shorter life span, most likely. After all, the human body is just a big electrochemical machine. Sleep as we know it is our scheduled maintenance.

Would you take that trade? I would be tempted. Depends on how much net time could be gained in the trade….something to think about.

Happy Saturday!