Conversely I can take 6.5 hours of sleep and do exercise, or sleep for 8 hours and not have time to exercise.
Self-help books are noticeably silent on which is better.
I think most of the people on hn (or at least most well-paid tech workers... do those still make the majority here?) can work less fairly easily, if that working less comes with the massive performance boost that goes with sleeping properly. I'm sure it's way different for retail and other hourly-type workers.
If I sleep more and if I sleep better? I am just way more effective. When I'm being effective and getting things done, people are pretty slack about me showing up late and/or leaving early, even at the FANG companies.
I mean, I don't know anyone who put "I worked X hours a day" in their promo packet; nobody cares. no, the idea behind the promo packet is that you show what you accomplished, and how those accomplishments effected the company.
My experience is that the boss gets on me about working more only when I'm not producing enough; usually the solution isn't to work more, but instead to figure out why I'm not performing up to expectations and fix that.
That is, one day you sleep more and don't exercise and the next day you sleep less and exercise.
I feel better now.