Ok, here is waht I know about sleep.
Sleep is like a drug, or food or w/e, the path of least resitance (which is 99% of people), people tend to over indulge. I think a block of solid sleep is a luxury, afforded only to the rich fat small balls final hour types (renegade unclean call for the gun machine...sigh nevermind, its a reference from SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE). Most popele do not need a block of sleep, nor do they need 8 hours, thats 56 hours a week!!!! That is a sleep glut, and that excess causes you to be slow in the morning and crave it when the "high" of sleep wears thin.
Now I present to you an alternative; polyphasic sleep, its a state where you do not sleep solid blocks of time, you merely take naps as long as you feel you "need" when you need them, and only that.
For example I sleep around an hour a day, just a nap here, a nap there, some days up to 2 hours, so more like 14 hours a week. I am always rested, and have plenty of time to eat well, and excercise and work 2 full jobs/run business stuff. I am always perky and I don't take any drugs that would help with that (just a burner).
The concept is that people over the millenia have done what is easiest, and safest. People could not hunt during hte night, and could not do shit or w/e they needed to. Well enter the new millenia and all that, we are now t he premier hunter in the night, everywhere, and now we "can" be awake almost all hte time, and only grow stronger and into better positions of sucess because of it. The sleepy minded non-changers, or proles as an orwell fan would duckspit, they keep sleeping the smae pattern thath as been presented them, in the form it has always been done. BUZZZ! wrong!
Sleep is an individual thing, and you take what you need. For example I do some handyman shit fora luxury home builder, I work 11 hours there a day, and I take a nap somewhere at the mid point, while the less organised oflk go and eat their sandwich truck garbage. I snack as I go. I skip the heavy meal sleep cycle and go right into production all day long, that way even if someone caught me sleeping (im too careful for that) I could argue "you eat and take breaks, I work and nap for a hal hour, whats the diff" and the quality of my product will speak for itself.

My humble and sincere suggestion, is you try and cut out the big block of sleep, it will only make you like everyone else eventually, trying to budget your life on 2/3rd's of your time (66.6ad infinitum to the educated folk ^^)>
40 minute naps will allow you to reach rem sleep, attain the wakefulness, and space out the "defrag" process of your subconscious, to allow you to process the information consciously as it is storedi n its basic form. You can shape your health and HARVEST THE ETERNAL DAY!
Well thats my 2 cents.
:dance: