I used to easily sleep 8 hours, then I had a kid with colic, followed by 6 months of back to back to back illness from daycare. Now I can’t sleep longer than 3-4 hours consecutively.
For me, I think part of the problem is not having enough hours in the day to take care of myself. If you’ve gotten very busy with work or life, it’s hard to do the things you need to do to get healthy sleep.
You could look at biphasic or polyphasic sleep. If it makes you feel any better, humans would apparently sleep in 2 chunks for most of history (waking up for a few hours at midnight-3am and sleeping again). As long as the total sleep duration is adequate, some research shows that it's not necessary to get 8 consecutive hours.
> humans would apparently sleep in 2 chunks for most of history (waking up for a few hours at midnight-3am and sleeping again)
I have read this claim for decades now, but I have trouble believing it. To me, a claim about pre-civilization human behavior doesn't have a whole lot of merit unless it can be explained as being evolutionarily advantageous to mammals in general or humans in particular. Humans are diurnal and I can't imagine a scenario in which "wasting" a few hour of potential sleep is worth it somehow in the middle of the night when it's dark and there's nothing to do anyway.
The closest I can come is that _maybe_ some small percentage of early humans were polyphasic sleepers, which benefited the tribe by watching out for a pack of hungry wolves or enemy tribe attacking in the middle of the night or whatever.
Same here, since having a kid I only averaged 4 hours of sleep for over 5 years now. In the morning I’m just gonna coffee drunk myself to last the whole day and night. I think I need a plan at some point in the near future.
For me, I think part of the problem is not having enough hours in the day to take care of myself. If you’ve gotten very busy with work or life, it’s hard to do the things you need to do to get healthy sleep.