Interesting, never heard of hypomania. Pretty much describes me, except I have learned to talk slower and stop once in a while. I am on the up side of life, have few inhibitions and my mind never stops. Don't know if I would call it racing thoughts.
Now, I am not sure if the hypomania is the reason I could never sleep before 2:30 AM for most of my life. What I do know, is my mind was most active between 11:00 PM and 2:30 AM. I would not consider myself a short sleeper though as the only reason I slept for such a short time was I had to get up early. It was my dream one day to know what it would be like to be able to sleep as much as I wanted.
Short sleeping may be a result of hypomania, but I don't think short sleeping is a cause of either hypomania, being gifted or success. I had a work colleage who decided he wanted to be smarter, so he decided to sleep only 2 hours a night. All that happened was he ended up very tired. We all got a good laugh out of it including him.
I think there are cases where short sleepers may end up being extremely successful in some way. However, I also expect some may run into a lot of problems in life. This is much like being gifted, it can be a gift and/or a curse.
These psychological studies which use the totals to determine the results are for the most part poor science. It is not the totals, but the shape of the graph which is important. This is the same as they used to do in the early what causes cancer studies. All they proved was any substance in overdose levels was likely to cause cancer. Some good scientists realized the error in these studies and many of them have been redone.
