A quick calculation:
Someone who sleeps 6 hours a day would get 4 REMs (every one and a half an hour) - each REM being longer than the previous one; let's say 5 mins, 15, 25, 35. This would make up to 80 mins of 'pure' dreaming a day.
A 7,5-hour sleeper would get one more REM, and around 45-50 additional minutes of dreams. So they would get around 130 mins - around 2 hours of dreams a day.
A 9-hour sleeper would still dream about an hour longer - 3 hours of dreaming a day.
An average amount of daily sleep would be around 7,5 hours - not long enough, but modern society is generally speaking deprived of good sound sleep. Let's even assume that the average is 9 hours a day. So John Q Public spends not more than 3 hours a day, dreaming - that's not 1/2, but 1/8.
Therefore, it's not that if you're not a lucid dreamer, you are wasting half of your life asleep, while you could be lucid dreaming instead, and having fun. Practically speaking, a seasoned, and very talented lucid dreamer, or oneironaut, would mabe be able to have one long lucid dream every night, and have an OBE every second day (I'm roughly speculating). So this would amount to an hour, maximum 2 hours a day.
In practice, therefore, I reckon that by lucid dreaming, astral travels, etc. you can use as much as 1/12 of your time better, if you're massively talented and experienced oneironaut.
EDIT: And when I look at that for the second time. It's not 1/4, 1/6, or 1/8, as my intuition used to say until I'v just calculated that. Yet, it is 1/12 of your life - of pure joy, instead of unconsciusness. Or, if you're not that good at it, let's say 1/24, or even 1/30. Of pure joy and often absolutely transcendent experience, which lucid draming surely is. Compare an average octogenarian with an octogenarian who since he was 15 has been practicing lucid dreaming, astral travels, etc. and got better and better at it. The latter will have experienced... like 4 years (even two years!!!) of sheer pleasure, joy, and happiness extra. Plus he knows something abut his own self. Amazing.
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