You can read many things about the power of sleep with most concluding the same thing – you need a minimum amount of sleep to be healthy.

In the article ‘3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late’ (Wired, December), they make some very interesting points:

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, "evening people" almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You’ll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

As a night owl myself, I could not agree more. I loved spending sleeping in during the holidays. I can still remember sitting up until 2AM studying in first year University, then coming out of my room and joining a few buddies in the common room to catch a late night re-run of Magnum P.I. 

That being said, I can guarantee you, if we would have had an XBOX 360 we would not have been watching Magnum PI.