I know from personal experience that I perform far better when I’m not in a sleep deficit. Yet, somehow I manage to get myself badly entrenched in one on a regular basis.

You can’t recover from a sleep deficit with one good long night of sleep, either. It takes a number of consistent nights of good sleep to properly recover.

That’s bad news for parents with kids that don’t sleep well (like mine), but it’s a good reminder to take control of the things we can control, like going to bed at a reasonable time.

From Sleep is More Important Than Food – The Energy Project:

So how much sleep do you need? When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours. That means just 2.5 percent of us require less than 7 hours of night a sleep to feel fully rested. That’s 1 out of every 40 people.

When I ask people in my talks how many had fewer than 7 hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the vast majority raise their hands. That’s true whether it’s an audience of corporate executives, teachers, cops or government workers. We’ve literally lost touch with what it feels like to be fully awake.

Great performers are an exception. Typically, they sleep significantly more than the rest of us. In Anders Ericcson’s famous study of violinists, the top performers slept an average of 8 ½ hours out of every 24, including a 20 to 30 minute midafternoon nap some 2 hours a day more than the average American.

The top violinists also reported that except for practice itself, sleep was second most important factor in improving as violinists.