Sleeping Habits of the Rich & Famous

We posted an Infographic look at the Sleeping Habits of the Rich & Famous recently and have had an amazing response to it. For those that missed it, here it is again.

We're always told about getting a regular, solid eight hours' sleep when it comes to being productive and successful, but not everyone follows this seemingly sound advice. Some of the most famous, successful and driven people throughout history have had some very strange sleeping habits - from micro-kips to sleeping in phases. We've got the oddest rich and famous sleeping habits in this new infographic.

Winston Churchill - British Politician and Former Prime Minister
Naps were so important to Churchill that he kept a bed in the House of Parliament and believed napping was the key to his success leading the country through the Battle of Britain.

Nikola Tesla - Serbian American Inventor
Tesla’s odd sleeping pattern caused him to have a mental breakdown at the age of 25. He managed to pull himself together and continued well into his old age, working another 38 years.

Thomas Edison - American Inventor and Businessman
Edison regarded sleep as a waste of time, and tried to minimise it as much as possible. He utilised a polyphasic sleep cycle, which is a nap-oriented pattern used to free up waking time.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Italian Painter, Sculptor and Architect
Da Vinci followed an even more extreme polyphasic sleep cycle than Edison, called the Uberman sleep cycle, which consists of taking a 20 minute nap every four hours.

Wolfgang Mozart - Austrian Composer
Mozart would often continue composing until 1.00am, then would sleep for only five hours before getting up again at 6.00am and continuing composing throughout the morning.

Richard Branson - British Entrepeneur, Businessman and Investor
Branson sleeps no more than 6 hours per night, and is up by 5.45am every morning to ensure he gets a head start on his day. He tries to exercise each morning and spend time with his family.

Sigmund Freud - Austrian Neurologist
Freud only slept 6 hours a night, likely due to his experimentation with self­ medicating with large doses of cocaine. He also smoked continually, resulting in 33 surgeries to remove the cancer.

Barack Obama - 44th President of the United States
Obama doesn't get a huge amount of sleep, but he cherishes the hours he does get. Aides at the White House must constantly decide what type of crisis is important enough to wake   him.

Voltaire - French Writer, Historian, and Philosopher
Voltaire would regularly sleep only four hours per night, and - like Balzac - was a great fan of coffee. It's said that he was known to drink up to 40 cups of coffee a day.

Donald Trump - American Entrepeneur, Businessman and Investor
Trump deliberately only sleeps 3 hours a night to stay ahead of the competition - he doesn't understand how someone who sleeps more can compete with those who get fewer hours.

Margaret Thatcher - British Politician and Former Prime Minister
Thatcher became famous for only sleeping 4 hours a night, which caused problems for her successor John Major, after the civil service got used to a PM that never slept.

Benjamin Franklin - A Founding Father of the United States
Franklin was an advocate of getting up early, and his thoughts on sleep have become a famous piece of advice: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”.