If you don't get enough sleep one night, you'll "rebound" and sleep in longer the next time you get a chance to do so to make up your "sleep debt." If you log your sleep every night with a ZEO (or similar tool) you can get a pretty good estimate of how much sleep you need just by looking at how little sleep you can get without a rebound on the weekend.
Performance can be a tricky issue, because short-term sleep deprivation can improve your mood and alertness, whereas short term sleep deprivation does the opposite. You may find that you do better on a test with less sleep, if you had been well rested up until the night with restricted sleep.
In general the effects of something that happens on one day carrying over to the next is a difficult problem to deal with in self experimentation. I would recommend trying to get more or less sleep than usual in about the same amount for at least a week before drawing any inferences about performance at that sleep duration.
In general the effects of something that happens on one day carrying over to the next is a difficult problem to deal with in self experimentation.
It's not really difficult: you solve it by using multi-day blocks. In my self-experiments, I randomize over days or weeks without problem.
I'm thinking that it should be possible to decide when to sleep based on reduced performance.
Can anyone suggest a tool for that purpose? Perhaps some reaction time testing software?
I guess I would have to track myself during the day to make a baseline, which is fine.
But without some sort of test I end up staying up way pass effectiveness, which is a waste of my time.
-Robin