(no subject)

after i switched jobs, i had the combination of a) later start time and b) no commute meaning i could wake up substantially later, which was nice cause getting up at 6 am was miserable. i experimented a little with how early to wake up, but i have kept my going-to-bed time about the same, resulting in going from ~7 hours of sleep during weekdays to ~8.5. and while the actual moment of waking up is, as far as i can recall, much less unpleasant, I have not noticed any substantial quality of life improvement from less sleep deprivation (which i did notice a couple years ago, when i decided 6 hours of sleep a night was not sustainable and i deliberately pushed back my bed time an hour). I also have not noticed any diminished tendency to sleep in during weekends, which i thought was just a catching-up habit (slightly sleep deprived during the week, make up for it during weekends) but has remained more or less the same.

so the obvious question occurs, right, should I or should I not push my bed time forwards some, get another ~hour of Doing Things per day, and what would the costs associated with it be? Might be a more miserable wake up, but it might not, since i'm not convinced that was about total time spent sleeping vs just amount of light outside (waking up always feels easier during summer, but temperature is a confounder). and either way time spent waking up is a few minutes of my day so it might be a worthy tradeoff, or not.

basic questions: do i actually receive no benefits from getting 8 vs 7 hours of sleep, or are they just subtle and I'm missing them? is there a straightforward way of testing this, comparing performance in some puzzle across more vs less sleep days or whatever, or should i be more worried about physical health than cognitive effects?

how much do I value an extra hour of Doing Things late at night? very little when I'm anhedonic because i don't actually want to do things, more so when I'm not, makes it hard to have an average. the solution of "go to sleep an hour later if you actually care about the thing you're doing right now rather than passing the time" would solve that problem, meaning i only get an extra hour when i value it, but also makes my sleep schedule Inconsistent which background general wisdom says is bad, not sure how much confidence

assuming extra miserableness in the morning is a cost I'd be paying (which should be relatively straightforward to test, at least), how much should I weigh that cost? since i only pay it several hours after making the decision that causes it, i might be underestimating it.