We've all been told that the 'natural' or 'healthy' sleeping schedule is 7-8 hours of sleep every night (at least for 17year olds like myself; probably less for adults). I've done some research on the matter and for the most parts the science of the brain, the body or why we sleep is rather hazy. There are many theories as to why we sleep but I think the most prominent two reasons are recuperation of the body and thought processing.

I was wondering, is it possible for your body to learn how to carry out this process of restoration more efficiently or quickly if you reduced your number of hours slept each night from let's say 7-8hours to perhaps 3-4hours? Otherwise, we are spending 8 / 24 hours of our lives (~33%+) everyday doing something comparable to a dead person. Sure, one might say that lucid dreaming is a solution to this problem if you think about it, even the longest of lucid dreams do not normally go on for longer than 10-20minutes and not many people have multiple lucids every night.

So, to sum up my question: is it a good idea to sleep 3-4hours (or maybe less) a night?