????企業高管精力旺盛、每天睡眠時間很少，這樣的故事我們聽得太多了。瑪莎?斯圖爾特自稱每晚睡4小時，百事公司（PepsiCo）首席執行官盧英德也一樣。盧英德的前任雷孟夫一直以來差不多每晚都是11點左右入睡，第二天一早5點左右就起床，跑上4英里。“我一般都睡5、6個小時，”他在一次接受采訪時說。“沒睡過更長時間。”但似乎已經足夠了：“大多時候，我都不需要鬧鈴，自己就會醒來。”

????少睡點是成功的秘訣嗎？因為睡得少就可以長時間工作，同時依然能夠保持個人生活？

????也許吧。Eos Sleep（前身即Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center）的創始人、睡眠專家戴維?沃爾皮稱，成人通常每晚需要6-8小時的睡眠時間。這意味著有些人，像雷孟夫【現為維克森林大學（Wake Forest University）商學院院長】，只睡6小時確實也可以。“如果你一晚上睡6小時，醒來時感覺休息好了，整天也不累，那就沒問題，”他說。“睡眠不足的話，身體自然會告訴你。”

????好消息是什么？好消息就是，就算你真的需要8小時睡眠，很多雖然每天睡眠的時間達到了美國人的均水平【美國勞動統計局（Bureau of Labor Statistics）的美國人時間利用調查顯示，美國人平均每天睡8.67個小時】，但他們同樣找到了成功之道。

????曼納?伊奧尼斯古經營著芝加哥一家數字營銷公司Lightspan Digital。作為一個企業家，她認為自己應該減少睡眠時間，增加工作時間。“不知怎么回事，人們認為不睡覺很了不起，還喜歡到處吹噓，”她說。但后來，“經過一個無眠夜之后，我開車出了個小事故。”

????事故并不嚴重，“但浪費了我很多時間”。從此以后，她一直堅持良好的睡眠習慣，每晚11點上床，早上7點起床。“從此，一切都不同了，”她說。“現在我可以完成更多的工作，更容易下決斷，更容易達成業務。能跑完半程馬拉松，能解決過去似乎不可能解決的問題。”換言之，現在她能更好地利用時間，盡管她醒著的時間減少了。

????簡?格雷澤擁有一家員工100人的目錄公司QCI Direct。她通常每晚10點半上床睡覺，早上6點半左右起床。雖然臨睡前她總是忍不住想再多回一封郵件，但“睡眠不足肯定沒法正常工作，也沒法領導一家公司，”她說。“剛開始創業的時候，我確實嘗試過減少睡眠，但很快就意識到，這樣一來，到了下午會精力不支。”

????那么，那些聲稱只需睡4小時的人呢？“全球有幾十億人，肯定有只需要4小時睡眠的人，”沃爾皮說。“但他們只是屬于特例。”

????要說這些怪人都集中在了華爾街和財富500強公司的高管隊伍中，那也不太可能。他說：“我認為這只是充好漢。”當然，對于女性，可能得換個說法。

????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.