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For years, doctors and researchers have stressed the importance of getting eight or nine hours of sleep. Sleep-deprived zombies can take heart in the list of people who do with much less: Barack Obama, for example, says he gets by with just four hours a night and yet he still seems capable of, like, running the country and stuff. (As for whether the same is true for members of Obama's inner circle, well, that's another issue.)

Plenty of other successful people fall into the same category. Martha Stewart says she, too, makes do with four hours. Donald Trump, for his part, claims he only closes his beautiful blue eyes for three or four hours a night, which makes sense given his busy schedule defending beauty contestants, hamming it up on cable news programs, and combing his mane of golden hair. And Diane Sawyer doesn't even need to sleep at all! She says she doesn't sleep at all on Sundays before she appears on Good Morning America on Monday.

Of course, doctors point out that sleep patterns are different for every person and some people need more sleep than others. And like his fashion sense and taste in interior design, you'd be well advised to avoid modeling yourself after The Donald. "When you hear reports of people who don't sleep," says one expert, it "isn't a model for people to try and learn to sleep less."

Do history's greatest figures owe their success to sleeping less? [NYDN]