成功的秘诀在于牺牲睡眠？

    企业高管精力旺盛、每天睡眠时间很少，这样的故事我们听得太多了。玛莎•斯图尔特自称每晚睡4小时，百事公司（PepsiCo）首席执行官卢英德也一样。卢英德的前任雷孟夫一直以来差不多每晚都是11点左右入睡，第二天一早5点左右就起床，跑上4英里。“我一般都睡5、6个小时，”他在一次接受采访时说。“没睡过更长时间。”但似乎已经足够了：“大多时候，我都不需要闹铃，自己就会醒来。”

    少睡点是成功的秘诀吗？因为睡得少就可以长时间工作，同时依然能够保持个人生活？

    也许吧。Eos Sleep（前身即Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center）的创始人、睡眠专家戴维•沃尔皮称，成人通常每晚需要6-8小时的睡眠时间。这意味着有些人，像雷孟夫【现为维克森林大学（Wake Forest University）商学院院长】，只睡6小时确实也可以。“如果你一晚上睡6小时，醒来时感觉休息好了，整天也不累，那就没问题，”他说。“睡眠不足的话，身体自然会告诉你。”

    好消息是什么？好消息就是，就算你真的需要8小时睡眠，很多虽然每天睡眠的时间达到了美国人的均水平【美国劳动统计局（Bureau of Labor Statistics）的美国人时间利用调查显示，美国人平均每天睡8.67个小时】，但他们同样找到了成功之道。

    曼纳•伊奥尼斯古经营着芝加哥一家数字营销公司Lightspan Digital。作为一个企业家，她认为自己应该减少睡眠时间，增加工作时间。“不知怎么回事，人们认为不睡觉很了不起，还喜欢到处吹嘘，”她说。但后来，“经过一个无眠夜之后，我开车出了个小事故。”

    事故并不严重，“但浪费了我很多时间”。从此以后，她一直坚持良好的睡眠习惯，每晚11点上床，早上7点起床。“从此，一切都不同了，”她说。“现在我可以完成更多的工作，更容易下决断，更容易达成业务。能跑完半程马拉松，能解决过去似乎不可能解决的问题。”换言之，现在她能更好地利用时间，尽管她醒着的时间减少了。

    简•格雷泽拥有一家员工100人的目录公司QCI Direct。她通常每晚10点半上床睡觉，早上6点半左右起床。虽然临睡前她总是忍不住想再多回一封邮件，但“睡眠不足肯定没法正常工作，也没法领导一家公司，”她说。“刚开始创业的时候，我确实尝试过减少睡眠，但很快就意识到，这样一来，到了下午会精力不支。”

    那么，那些声称只需睡4小时的人呢？“全球有几十亿人，肯定有只需要4小时睡眠的人，”沃尔皮说。“但他们只是属于特例。”

    要说这些怪人都集中在了华尔街和财富500强公司的高管队伍中，那也不太可能。他说：“我认为这只是充好汉。”当然，对于女性，可能得换个说法。

    Stories abound of business leaders who don't sleep much. Martha Stewart has claimed to sleep about four hours a night, as has Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo (PEP). Her predecessor, Steve Reinemund, has gotten up around 5 a.m. to run 4 miles most mornings of his life after going to bed around 11. "I sleep normally between five, six hours," he said in an interview. "I've never gotten more." But it seems to be enough: "Most of the time I don't wake up with an alarm."

    Is not needing much sleep a secret to success -- giving people a chance to work long hours and still have a life?

    Well, maybe. According to David Volpi, a sleep specialist and founder of Eos Sleep (formerly the Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center), adults generally need six to eight hours a night. That means that some people, like Reinemund (now dean at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business), can do fine on just six hours. "If you get six hours a night and feel well-rested when you wake up and don't get tired throughout the day, that kind of tells you," he says. "Your body will tell you if you don't get enough sleep."

    The good news? If you do need eight hours, plenty of people have found ways to be successful and still sleep almost as much as the average American (who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, is clocking 8.67 hours of sleep on an average day).

    Mana Ionescu runs Lightspan Digital, a Chicago-based digital marketing company. As an entrepreneur, she thought she should sleep less and work more. "Somehow people find it heroic to not sleep and brag about it too," she says. But then "I got behind the wheel after a night without sleep and got into a fender bender."

    The accident wasn't major, "but I wasted many hours of my life as a result." She's practiced good sleep hygiene ever since, going to bed at 11 and waking up at 7. "Everything has changed," she says. "I am able to work more, decisions are easier to make, business is easier to close. I've been running half marathons and solved problems that before seemed almost impossible to solve." In other words, she's making better use of her hours, even if she's awake for fewer of them.

    Jane Glazer, who owns QCI Direct, a multi-title catalog firm with 100 employees, is usually in bed by 10:30 pm and up around 6:30 am. While there's always the temptation to answer one more email before bed, "you can't function and lead a company being sleep deprived," she says. "In the early years of my business, I did try to get by with less, but I quickly learned I would burn out by mid-afternoon."

    As for people who claim they only need four hours? "With the billions of people in the world, there are, I'm sure, people that only need four hours of sleep," Volpi says. "But that would be the exception to the rule."

    It's unlikely that these freaks of nature have all congregated on Wall Street and in the executive ranks of Fortune 500 companies. "I think it's just macho," he says. Or whatever the female version of macho is.