Many students and working adults struggle to sleep the recommended amount because of competing wake activities, and thus, face multiple well-established neurobehavioual and metabolic costs associated with sleep loss, e.g. impaired cognitive functions and mood, altered brain activation and network connectivity, reduced glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and higher risk for diabetes. As part of our group’s continuous effort to identify alternative short sleep schedules that can attenuate these sub-optimal consequences in the long run while still allowing individuals to meet impending study and work demands, this 16-day laboratory-based study will investigate whether a variable or a stable sleep schedule will be more effective in minimizing neurobehavioual and metabolic deficits when total sleep opportunity across two weeks is below the recommended sleep duration.