18 ms·

How to Sleep

649 points by ALee 9y ago

aarohmankad 9y ago
What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? There have been nights where I had to put on my ANC headphones to get some peace and quiet. (I've heard a good pair of earplugs may work?)
- sova 9y ago
  It's strange to think you heard anything in regard to good earplugs.
- deskglass 9y ago
  I had success with earplugs combined with whitenoise. For white noise, you can used an air purifier, a fan, or a noise machine like https://www.marpac.com/ https://www.marpac.com/
- tlarkworthy 9y ago
  I have sleep mask with earphones with a rain loop playing, and sometimes I put ear buds in too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B012YFVN90?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B012YFVN90?psc=1 http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=makeitrain.pack http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=makeitrain.pack
- moultano 9y ago
  Get a white noise machine.
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    Something along these lines I recommend is a loud HEPA filter fan, so you get fresh air + white noise.
    - Bakary 9y ago
      Currently living in China and this is a godsend
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Use pink noise instead of white noise, if you can. It's less "sharp". Personally, I can't stand more than few moments of white noise, while I can listen to pink noise for hours (it reminds me of sea waves crashing into the shore).
  - lozf 9y ago
    Install sox and you might not need one. See my reply up-thread for details.
- Tehnix 9y ago
  Earplugs take away a lot of the noise, the only thing might be that if they don't fit, i.e. are a bit too big, then they can be somewhat uncomfortable after half the night. I would definitely try that if I was you :) For reference, I'm currently using them most nights because I'm on exchange and am sharing a dorm room with another guy that snores at night -.-....
  - Nition 9y ago
    In terms of comfort, if you lie on your side it sometimes works well enough to just wear one ear-plug, with your other ear on the pillow.
  - collyw 9y ago
    Personally I get irritated ears if I use earplugs for a few nights in a row.
- PhantomGremlin 9y ago
  What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? Try these. Cheap and can easily be reused for a week even though they are "disposable": http://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Orange-Disposable-Earplugs-7-Pairs-per-Pack-92077-7-20DC/202080168 http://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Orange-Disposable-Earplugs-7-P... I was forced into using them by an inconsiderate neighbor. He kept putting his dog out into the back yard very early every morning ... in response the dog would loudly whine and bark until let back in. Thankfully the dog is long gone.
  - collyw 9y ago
    Throwing a cup of water over barking dogs tends to shut them up.
- Hydraulix989 9y ago
  Howard Leight MAX earplugs have the highest noise cancellation rating in dB that I've seen, and they were the best ones I've tried. Works for me, I live right below my landlord who has an uncarpeted wooden floor with kids, where otherwise I'd have the sound of incessant stomping upstairs as a very reliable daily alarm clock.
- closeparen 9y ago
  A fan. I sleep like a baby with an extremely loud fan roaring in my face, as long as the noise is consistent. Sort of like being in an airplane. Would you fall asleep with someone whispering in your ear? Earplugs can only reduce the intensity of sounds, but the distracting part is the detail/variation/information in them. Even in a quiet room, putting in earplugs guarantees I will stay awake listening to my own heartbeat and blood flow in excruciating detail. shudder. A sufficiently loud drone noise, on the other hand, drowns out any of the more variable noises that would keep me awake.
  - workerIbe 9y ago
    Agreed, I contribute a good chunk of the quality of my sleep to my fan.
  - lozf 9y ago
    If you have sox (free, cross platform, open source) installed, you can run e.g.: play -n synth 08:00:00 pinknoise for 8 hours of noise -- you might prefer either whitenoise or brownnoise, and maybe play around with the eq or other effect options to modulate the output if you want a little variation. If you skip the duration it'll play til you ^C.
    - lucb1e 9y ago
      Or ocean waves with sox: play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth sine amod 0.3 10 Via: https://askubuntu.com/a/789472/111115 https://askubuntu.com/a/789472/111115
- elcapitan 9y ago
  People have mentioned headphones/earphones and earplugs, but you can actually combine the two. Take in-ear earphones, take off the thin rubber plugs on their end. Cut off the earplugs to the size (or 1.5x) of those rubber plugs. Then compress the earplugs to coin-flatness, and punch a thin hole through them 2mm or so. Put them on the earphones. As with earplugs, press them before inserting, then wait a few seconds for them to decompress in your ears. I've used that in the past before I got Bose active noise cancelling phones. They work basically as good as unpunched earplugs, but you can add white noise or music or whatever on top of that. Edit: Found that (of course) someone made a video of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m_RseMrok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m_RseMrok
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
I guess it's once again time for my standard PSA response to this genre: various chronic medical conditions can interfere with sleep. If you consistently have trouble sleeping or sleeping well over an extended period of time, it very well could be something more than "poor sleep habits".
- funkyy 9y ago
  And it very well couldn't. Slapping medical name to everything is not a solution either. Sometimes sleep disorder is as little as the wrong diet.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    Sometimes people are speaking from direct experience with well-validated medical conditions fucking up their lives for multiple decades until someone eventually bothered to actually order the relevant diagnostic test.
    - Hydraulix989 9y ago
      Like sleep apnea: A lot of doctors mistakenly think that only overweight people can have sleep apnea. I am 6' 150 lbs and was tired my whole life until I INSISTED I get a sleep study. Turns out I had severe sleep apnea.
      - swah 9y ago
        And the solution is to sleep with a CPAP? Could I just rent one and check if I wake up more rested? Does snoring correlate with sleep apnea?
        Hydraulix989 9y ago
        Snoring definitely correlates with apnea (your airway is already narrowing enough to "snore"). You could rent one but you wouldn't know the optimal pressure settings without a titration sleep study. You could try renting an auto adjusting machine and set the window wide open so that min pressure is the lowest possible value and Max pressure is the highest. Then if you look at the data and see that the machine had to increase the pressure while you slept with it on, you know you had a disordered breathing event(s). The machine reports back AHI but it really means that you stopped breathing and the machine couldn't treat you effectively because the pressure wasn't set correctly, but it doesn't report apneas that you would have had without wearing the machine to begin with because at pressure, it has no way of knowing/measuring them, if that makes sense.
caio1982 9y ago
It actually does not tell how to sleep, it only discusses common sense strategies like taking melatonine and avoiding (or not) caffeine. Kind of a let down.
branchless 9y ago
This is an interesting article if only for the nugget that only 1% think they function well on 4-5 hours (though they may be mistaken). The title isn't great - it cautions against common fallacies about aids to sleeping.
rrggrr 9y ago
1. Room temperature should be between 60 - 67 degrees F. 2. No electronics, games, and minimal to no blue light 30min to 1hour before sleep. 3. Do not exercise less than 3 hours before sleep. Exception: sex. 4. Coffee and other stimulants before 12pm, not after. 5. Avoid naps longer than 15 minutes day of. 6. Stretch before going to sleep, particularly if you experience minor restless legs or periodic leg movements. 7. Avoid alcohol, will reduce sleep quality. 8. Avoid stimulating TV, conversations or books before sleep. 9. Controversial: Sleep in late if you can. Adequate sleep is more important than consistent sleep rhythm. My opinion only.
- Teichopsia 9y ago
  3- unless one is a woman. From my limited understanding, men get sleepy and women get 'activated' (lack for a better word).
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    I've seen a good number of data points to the contrary in one particular situation. There was an article about a vibrator alarm clock promoting starting the day with an orgasm, and pretty much every women commenting on the article mentioned how stupid an idea that seemed because they said it would put them right back to sleep.
    - Teichopsia 9y ago
      I figured as much, that's why I said "my limited understanding" (for those who love downvoting and not explaining). For the commenters below, true. Thanks for the replies all of you.
  - csa 9y ago
    As an anecdotal contrast, I (male) get activated even when I'm very tired beforehand.
  - blunte 9y ago
    My "observations" from a "few" samples with a lot of data points is that females get very sleepy after quality #3.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
I'm not sure what the long term effects of chronic melatonin supplementation are, but I'll find out eventually. I've been taking between 3-6mg of melatonin every night for the past few years (2011?) It's almost required. Without it my sleep cycle seems fine at first, but then gets out of whack as I can't seem to keep a circadian rhythm in line with the rest of society / the earth's rotation. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I can't function mentally without caffeine. I tried going off caffeine a few times, and while the withdrawal effects were horrible, they eventually passed and everything felt great except my ability to concentrate on anything. Sadly I can't afford to see a doctor for my ADHD meds. While caffeine helps, it still leaves much to be desired. Exercise helps immensely, both in terms of sleep and ability to concentrate, but at some point I injured my upper back (rhomboids and rotator cuff muscles), so I can't get the same level of exercise I had before.
- htk 9y ago
  I share the habits (melatonin, caffeine and exercise) and eventual strategies (coffee withdrawal from time to time). Would you care to elaborate on your methods? (What time do you take melatonin, how much and at what time do you take coffee?) Thanks!
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    For caffeine, I'm probably consuming way too much. I use french roast (less caffeine + less acid) with an espresso machine (course grind folgers rather than fine grind). I think it comes out to roughly slightly less than 1.5 cups (12 fluid ounces) per dose. I take a dose within about 1 - 1.5 hours of waking up and another dose half way through the day. I need to start taking the second dose earlier so 1) I don't experience the mid day crash and 2) there's less in my system when I go to bed. For melatonin I take 3mg about an hour or two before going to bed and another 3mg right before going to bed. Sleep is generally good, but not as much as I would like, which I think is partly due to going to bed too late, thus light entering my room due to insufficient window blackout methods. Something weird I notice about melatonin is that it helps me get work done just before bed, because my mind thinks less about it and just does it, but this probably isn't the best way to work.
ashark 9y ago
1) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 2) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 3) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 4) very low candle-temperature lighting only after dark. Especially try to keep it out of your direct line of sight. It'll work, but 1-3 are hard.
- nemasu 9y ago
  Hmm, can people reasonably do 1-3 in places where the sun sets at like 6PM?
  - Bakary 9y ago
    There are tools that reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen. They essentially turn your screen orange. The difference it makes is large enough that you wonder how you managed before it. The most well known is f.lux, but it's also natively supported in some phone OSes.
    - casicone 9y ago
      Windows 10 also has this feature built in, called Night light, in the Display settings.
    - theWatcher37 9y ago
      Native in iOS, OSX, and windows now. Probably on android.
    - Kostic 9y ago
      Also available in GNOME 3, on Linux, under the name of 'Night Light'[0]. [0] https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/attachment/night-light/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/attac...
    - TremendousJudge 9y ago
      I use f.lux, it's fantastic: https://justgetflux.com/ https://justgetflux.com/ Much better than the native solutions that come with operating systems nowadays
xupybd 9y ago
>So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them least likely to lie about being sick when they want to skip work. Or maybe people who were already sick with some chronic condition were sleeping more than that—or less—as a result of their illness. Statistics are tough to interpret. Love that, no lazy journalism, no ridiculous claims. Just the facts and some possible implications.
- Shank 9y ago
  From The Atlantic, I expected a little more science and a little more suggestion from this article. This read more as a summary of all of the little sleep tips I've seen and heard anecdotally over the last few years rolled into one summary. Not exactly on the same level as "When Your Child Is a Psychopath" or "My Family's Slave" (two very recent and exceptionally great articles from The Atlantic).
  - soperj 9y ago
    I really wonder about the "When Your Child is a Psychopath" one, it was a good story and all, but I wonder how many people read that article and like me left feeling like "I can relate". As a kid in pre-school, I pissed in another kids face. In elementary I ripped a kid's eyelid off, and pulled another kid's leg through a bike lock station and then broke it amongst many other things. I never hurt a teacher, but I was under a hundred pounds in gr.6. If I had matured earlier I can't say that I wouldn't have, since they definitely manhandled me after every fight I got into. I remember another parent saying that when I grew up I was either going to be in jail for mass murder, or the prime minister, as if there were no other option. I wonder how many other people did similar things as a kid and turned out completely ordinary.
    - imesh 9y ago
      What makes you ordinary?
      - hueving 9y ago
ysavir 9y ago
The article mentions William Dement, one of the pioneer researchers on sleep. His book The Promise of Sleep is a great and easy read, and I absolutely recommend it for anyone looking to learn more about the subject and the history behind the study of sleep.
mythrwy 9y ago
I've had great luck with these videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7OGw1QS9JI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7OGw1QS9JI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTAwdgf1nZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTAwdgf1nZE I went through a phase a few years ago where I'd fall asleep only to wake up a short time later with mind racing, then be up half the night and tired the next day. This went on for some months and was very annoying. These videos cured that phase right away. I don't listen to them much anymore but they really worked. It wasn't just staying asleep that was cured, the quality of the sleep seemed much better. Still listen on occasion if having trouble getting in "sleep mode".
- teolandon 9y ago
  Is it weird that these videos never work for me? I haven't tried these particular ones, but I've had tons of troubles sleeping through the years, and hypnosis audios never works. It actually gets me frustrated and keeps me up longer.
  - tomcam 9y ago
    No it's not. Me too
- chillwaves 9y ago
  This is my favorite, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXlScN9AO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXlScN9AO0 Had severe insomnia a few years ago. The video is soothing and the self talk helped calm me down, so even if I didn't sleep I experienced less stress (which helped me sleep).
teolandon 9y ago
My biggest struggle with sleep is that I'm always excited to do stuff, and always feel like I'm not done with my day. Exceptions are when something happens and I end up feeling very depressed during the day, and simply want to shut down and do nothing. Usually, I get so infatuated with a script I'm writing, a new program I discovered, a bug that I need to resolve, a book that I'm reading, some concept that I'm thinking of, that my mind just keeps on being active, and wants to keep working. It's the worst when I'm working on my computer, due to the blue light (I've started wearing yellow sunglasses to minimize the effect), while it's a bit better when I'm reading or listening to music or thinking. In any case, this is a great article. I feel like small amounts of sleep has been the greatest inhibitor of my performance in... anything really. Being dumb and young I felt like I could still function correctly, but I really started noticing that I had better tournament results when actually sleeping 8 hours, while my results on all other days were lackluster. I read up on a lot of things and convinced myself that sleeping enough is essential. I still slip up and don't even go on my bed at the right times, my sleep schedule goes all over the place for a lot of different reasons, but I'm really trying. I feel like I might need to seek some professional help on this, but I'll still take it as far as possible before that.
- problems 9y ago
  I'm in the same boat here actually. If I actually feel like going to sleep at the correct time I feel like I'm just not getting any value out of my life unless there's something that interests me at all times. I just keep pounding caffeine and it really doesn't bug me. I'm sure my performance in just about everything has dropped significantly, but eh, I'm in a fairly secure situation now, so I feel like value out of my life vs performance in tasks I don't really like that much... I'll take the value usually.
  - teekert 9y ago
    I feel the same, and I always seem to be able to drop that rushed feeling after about 3-4 days of holiday. Just being in nature first make me feel I should be doing something useful but after a couple of days the more relaxed mindset kicks in. I become a nicer person to be around, I'm better at handling my kids (I'm less emotional, more calm) and I start to live more slowly. The relationship with my wife also flourishes under such circumstances. That feeling we create, of urgency, of pressure to perform, of setting the bar so high we almost always fail our own big plans, is really damaging I think. It's very healthy to feel content with oneself, to be proud and calm, to feel like you are doing well.
manibatra 9y ago
Personally the change that has helped me the most has been mental. I used to feel "guilty" of going to bed early, not working to exhaustion. Now I view sleep as something to enjoy. Just letting go of that guilt has me sleep a lot better. From being a light sleeper I have gone to be able to sleep through my housemates blaring loud music.
ericdykstra 9y ago
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day. Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul. Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled. Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry. Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues! But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/2 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/2
Izmaki 9y ago
Reading this on Monday morning already late for work and wondering when I can have a nap...
kutkloon7 9y ago
Great article. I especially like the interpretation of the statistics by the author, which is, well, hardly any interpretation at all: "One 2014 study of more than 3,000 people in Finland found that the amount of sleep that correlated with the fewest sick days was 7.63 hours a night for women and 7.76 hours for men. So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them least likely to lie about being sick when they want to skip work. Or maybe people who were already sick with some chronic condition were sleeping more than that—or less—as a result of their illness. Statistics are tough to interpret." Contrasted with articles that take one example (a 94-year old making a breakthrough in some field) and directly generalize it ("to be a genius, think like a 94-year-old"), this is a much healthier and saner approach to interpreting statistics. (I didn't make this example up; it was on hacker news)
- tie_ 9y ago
  Same here. Really impressed how the author restrained themselves from jumping into the most intuitive conclusion, and instead quoted a few other plausible alternatives. We need more of that!
bojanvidanovic 9y ago
One of my cousins is in that 1% of people. He sleeps 4-5 hours a night and stays hyperactive all day. I'm so jealous of him!
GoToRO 9y ago
If you have problem sleeping do this: there will be some times when you will sleep better. What you have to do is go back 3-7 days and see what you did in those days and do more of that regularly.
KennyCason 9y ago
> The original studies seemed to say yes. But when the military put soldiers in a lab to make certain they stayed awake, performance suffered. One minor piece of anecdotal evidence here. I have done a few 5-6 day sleep deprivation experiments in my life. I've stayed up for 3 days more times than I can count. I also used to regularly sleep every other day for long chunks of time. It's something that I could do much better when I was younger, and I try to avoid this now as I regularly get sick when I don't sleep for extended periods of time nowadays. Firstly, performance (particularly my short term memory) always suffered. Sometimes if not active, or sitting for long periods of time I'd also get pain in my joints. Typically, when I fall asleep or start feeling tired it's because I enter a small boring, quiet homely environment (i.e. go home, or sit in a quiet room, or watch tv). My secret to staying awake was constant activity like walking around, talking to people, hydrating (water), small snacks, and walking some more, etc. I feel that the effects of sleep deprivation hit the hardest when I'm not being stimulated physically. As such, I think dragging someone into a lab would have a harsh effect on one's performance. While I think no matter what you will suffer from performance degradation, I would love to see some contrast between performance given different environments/habits.
OJFord 9y ago
> In 2013, a 24-year-old advertising copywriter in Indonesia died after prolonged sleep deprivation, collapsing a few hours after tweeting “30 hours of working and still going strooong.” She went into a coma and died the next morning. Things like this always slightly scare me. I have been awake consecutively for far longer, and on several occasions. But does that mean I just can - or would I really be risking death each time?
- Asooka 9y ago
  The article suggests his death was due to a combination of too much energy drinks and a preexisting mild heart condition. If you get regular checkups you should be probably mostly fine for a while until you get weakened by old age and can't do it any more. That is not to say that it's at all recommended. I personally absolutely cannot stay awake for more than 20 hours.
esseti 9y ago
"Or, sometimes preferable, read something on paper.". Now, to read on paper we need light, so the problem is not solved (altought the ligth is not directly from the device into the eyes). But the real question is, if I use the kindle with its light that lights up the screen, will it be the same as using a phone? or what?
- arsenico 9y ago
  Kindle Paperwhite as well as latest Kobos and other advanced e-readers are totally different from phone or tablet screens by the way they illuminate.
- pizza 9y ago
  The color temperature of a phone backlight and ordinary household lighting are fairly different
  - anothercomment 9y ago
    Ordinary household lighting is more and more being replaced by LEDs, though.
drukenemo 9y ago
A recent TED I watched linked sleep deprivation with the speed one can develop Alzheimer https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_genova_what_you_can_do_to_prevent_alzheimer_s https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_genova_what_you_can_do_to_pre...
ziglef 9y ago
I consider myself one of those short-sleepers. Ever since I was a kid I averaged 5-6h of sleep a day. While the differences perceived (which can always be misleading) from sleeping 6 or 8 hours weren't noticeable, if I slept 4-5 for a week my short term memory would suffer, reflexes and split second decision making (think fast passed multiplayer shooters) would also suffer. But what I noticed was that although the split second decision process would come back after a good night sleep, short memory would take me a whole 3-4 days to come back at its finest. Obviously this is all what I observed and not to be taken seriously, because as we know observing and understanding oneself is one of the hardest tasks out there. Just my 2c
- chippy 9y ago
  Interesting 2c about observations - because according the article, people who have less sleep may perform worse objectively, but to themselves they report no noticeable difference.
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    Short term memory variation is very obvious to me when coding. And as the GP mentioned, reflex variation can be obvious when playing FPS games.
    - chippy 9y ago
      I wonder what tasks the subjects were given in the studies. slightly related - I seem to remember a study on the performance of hungover people. Hungover people self-reported that they performed worse, but objectively there was no negative change! (edits...or thinking about it some more, maybe the thing was that they had Common Colds)
mansilladev 9y ago
How not to sleep: /this I read this article 8 hours ago. Now I'm in bed, staring at this screen, typing this comment at 5 AM.
- anothercomment 9y ago
  Actually, you are only dreaming this :-)
  - teddyh 9y ago
    http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-office-mandatory-nap-time http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-office-mandatory-nap-...
chippy 9y ago
My "One Simple Trick" to help limit active thinking when in bed, and thus make it easier to sleep is to write the thoughts down, pen on paper. By thinking I mean things like being excited about an event, going over a conversation, thinking about some code, an idea, things to do tomorrow, errands etc. All things that can be literally dumped onto paper and stored. In my experience I have found that pen and paper work better than typing into a device. Now, I still seem to wake up multiple times during the night, but it's not because my brain is excited anymore.
jedisct1 9y ago
I don't have a computer at home any more. Granted, the office is at walking distance, and I can go there 24/7, but not having a computer at home recently made a huge difference. Once I go back home, I don't have the temptation of hacking something really quick, which will eventually last longer that expected, and I'll then keep thinking about it all night long. Verdict? Better sleep. And I can get up earlier. Overall I feel better and more productive, if only because there is a better separation between work (including on OSS projects) and personal life.
wakkaflokka 9y ago
I could write an essay about my battle with sleep. I'm in my 30's and I finally think it's solved. Sleeping meds, sleep studies, CBT-I, you name it - I've done it. My ultimate solution ended up being: - Earplugs - Exercise - Waking up the same time every single day, no matter how late I stay up. CBT-I had me wake up at 6:30 am every morning, and go to bed at 1 am. After a week of exhaustion, I started falling asleep like a rock. Then my therapist gradually had me go to sleep earlier and earlier until my time-to-sleep was still short and I had few awakenings during the night, but felt refreshed the next day. Turned out to be just around 6.5 hours a night - No coffee after 3 pm There are still nights where I have an active mind and have trouble sleeping, but I'll just let it happen without constantly worrying "oh no, I'm not gonna get ___ hours of sleep tonight". Because the minute you try to force yourself to sleep, it's over.
- voidz 9y ago
  Earplugs are my #1 life changer when it comes to sleep. I found these really soft ones that don't really get in the way when you're lying on one ear, they filter pretty much all of the sound and when I take them out the next day, my ears don't hurt. As it turns out my wife's breathing kept me kind of awake, and traffic sounds too. And now that I got used to it, thanks to the associativity of the brain, these days I fall asleep within 10 minutes of putting them in. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I do need sleep meds to just tip me over into actual sleep. But if there's one thing I can recommend to other people is to spend some time to really find your own suitable ear plugs. I'm just lucky my wife is ok with it, she doesn't have these sleeping problems and is on stanby for if our boy might wake up in the night... Which almost never happens.
  - iman453 9y ago
    Could you tell me which earplugs you use and how you went about finding the right ones?
    - alltakendamned 9y ago
      I use the foam earplugs from Quies. https://www.quies.com/product/foam-earplugs/ https://www.quies.com/product/foam-earplugs/
smartbit 9y ago
William Dement gave a Google Tech talk on September 23, 2008. Dement recalls that Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 11 days in 1964, when asked some 40years later "would you do this again?" he replied "No way would I do this again" [0] Very interesting from Dement's talk is that equilibrium daily average sleep for completely health young adults is 8:15 ± 50min [1]. Most people I meet contest these results and state that they can work optimal with less than 7h25m daily sleep. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=1310 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=1310 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=28m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=28m29s
bobjordan 9y ago
My experience with Melatonin is that about 1.5 mg per night is a game changer. I travel across the Pacific Ocean several times per year and it got to where I was a stick of dynamite temper wise for a week after each trip, just not able to cope with any irritations, due to Jetlag. On top of that, just the general stress of being an entrepreneur resulted in bad sleep. For some reason, I bought the melatonin, and I'm very glad I did it. Now, I sleep like I did when I was in elementary school. Lots of dreams and even wake up with solutions to problems that I went to bed thinking about.
bhavyapruthi 9y ago
"Dolphins are said to sleep with only half their brain at a time, keeping partially alert for predators. Many of us spend much of our lives in a similar state." This is definitely deep.
m-j-fox 9y ago
Whatever you do, don't click the video at the bottom of the article unless you have a few hours to kill. Dr. James is an impossibly engaging and fun-to-watch youtuber and there goes my memorial day.
lphnull 9y ago
I'm 30 years old now. I was able to live on 4-6 hrs of sleep a night all the way up to age 25-28. That's when sleep started becoming a problem. At age 30, I absolutely need 8 hours of sleep minimum average of sleep, but that average has to be accumulated over the course of a week! That means that a single night of sleeping less and doing strenuous tasks on a linux terminal now takes a toll on me in ways that I have never felt before in my youth. Full disclaimer: I am a blue collar worker at a non-computer job who physically excerts myself and am very fit as a result of my job. This is part of why sleep is mandatory for me. The older you get, the more sleep you need and the less alcohol your body can handle. This is a universal truth that people <age 25 have a hard time accepting because everybody has to be a superman of course.
- dpark 9y ago
  > The older you get, the more sleep you need This isn't true. Need for sleep declines with age. Youth masks the effects of poor sleep in the same way it masks poor eating and lack of exercise. But young people need more sleep, not less.
notyourloops 9y ago
I had trouble with insomnia until I took up the practice of meditation. It was not my intention to solve my insomnia via meditation, but that's what happened incidentally.
bewe42 9y ago
I can recommend "The effortless sleep method" by S. Stephens.
- brw12 9y ago
  Can you say more about it?
michaele 9y ago
Try 15-20 minutes of meditation right before you go to bed. I find it slows my mind, decreases stress and prepares my body to sleep deeply and well.
michaele 9y ago
Try meditation, 15-20 minutes before you go to bed. I find it helps calm my mind and prepares my body for a deep restful sleep.
TheAdamist 9y ago
New to sleeping with people, I find the actual sleeping part the tricky bit. Not my expectation at all.
herbcso 9y ago
Is nobody else concerned with the implications of what losing sleep does to the doctor going through residency? I've always thought that was insane. The author even admits to having observed the detrimental effects first-hand, yet never suggests that this practice should be abandoned - why is that!? I as a patient have enough of a problem giving myself into the care of a doctor-in-training, why does s/he have to sleep-deprived on top of not being fully trained? Is this some sort of macho thing, or a "well, I went through this hazing, so you gotta do it, too" kind of thing? Somebody please enlighten me as to what the point of this seemingly counter-productive practice is!
diyseguy 9y ago
For those struggling with caffeine addiction and poor sleep I strongly recommend rutaecarpine. Take one a few hours before bedtime and it deactivates the caffeine so you can sleep.
chillytoes 9y ago
This was a pretty weak article. Usually The Atlantic packs a powerful punch. This seemed like clickbait.
charliemol 9y ago
>In one study published in the journal Sleep, researchers kept people just slightly sleep deprived—allowing them only six hours to sleep each night—and watched the subjects’ performance on cognitive tests plummet. The crucial finding was that throughout their time in the study, the sixers thought they were functioning perfectly well. >Effective sleep habits, like many things, seem to come back to self-awareness. One of the things I've noticed is that it's really hard to police your own sleep schedule, especially if you aren't aware of the consequences of losing a few hours of sleep. I'm working on a bot that helps you get to bed earlier, and our power users often come to us with a really clear understanding of what happens when they don't get enough sleep (e.g. "I perform way worse on my Army fitness test", "I'm not focused enough to do my side project after work") and still need to set up systems to keep themselves accountable on a daily basis. That said, I think there's a much larger "zombie population" of the "sixers" described above that isn't getting enough sleep and simply isn't particularly aware of it. From a population health standpoint, the question then becomes: How do we get people to appreciate the effect of getting a full 7-9 hours of sleep when they don't explicitly feel the effects on a daily basis? Not only that, but how do we get them to unwind and prioritize getting good night's sleep at the time of day when willpower is low and Netflix temptations are high. The CEO of Netflix somewhat flippantly declared sleep their biggest competition, and I think they're crushing the competition right now. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/netflix-downloads-sleep-biggest-competition-video-streaming-ceo-reed-hastings-amazon-prime-sky-go-a7690561.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... On the bright side there are people who have used our product and seen it make a pretty big difference. The trick was getting them to start with a very unambitious bedtime goal relative to their average bedtime, and gradually make the bedtime earlier week over week until they've dismantled their bad sleep habits.
tempodox 9y ago
Finally. Mankind exists for almost a million years, but only now are we taught how to sleep. Seriously, how did our ancestors survive?

649 points by ALee 9y ago

What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? There have been nights where I had to put on my ANC headphones to get some peace and quiet. (I've heard a good pair of earplugs may work?)

sova 9y ago
It's strange to think you heard anything in regard to good earplugs.
deskglass 9y ago
I had success with earplugs combined with whitenoise. For white noise, you can used an air purifier, a fan, or a noise machine like https://www.marpac.com/ https://www.marpac.com/
tlarkworthy 9y ago
I have sleep mask with earphones with a rain loop playing, and sometimes I put ear buds in too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B012YFVN90?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B012YFVN90?psc=1 http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=makeitrain.pack http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=makeitrain.pack
moultano 9y ago
Get a white noise machine.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Something along these lines I recommend is a loud HEPA filter fan, so you get fresh air + white noise.
  - Bakary 9y ago
    Currently living in China and this is a godsend
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Use pink noise instead of white noise, if you can. It's less "sharp". Personally, I can't stand more than few moments of white noise, while I can listen to pink noise for hours (it reminds me of sea waves crashing into the shore).
- lozf 9y ago
  Install sox and you might not need one. See my reply up-thread for details.
Tehnix 9y ago
Earplugs take away a lot of the noise, the only thing might be that if they don't fit, i.e. are a bit too big, then they can be somewhat uncomfortable after half the night. I would definitely try that if I was you :) For reference, I'm currently using them most nights because I'm on exchange and am sharing a dorm room with another guy that snores at night -.-....
- Nition 9y ago
  In terms of comfort, if you lie on your side it sometimes works well enough to just wear one ear-plug, with your other ear on the pillow.
- collyw 9y ago
  Personally I get irritated ears if I use earplugs for a few nights in a row.
PhantomGremlin 9y ago
What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? Try these. Cheap and can easily be reused for a week even though they are "disposable": http://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Orange-Disposable-Earplugs-7-Pairs-per-Pack-92077-7-20DC/202080168 http://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Orange-Disposable-Earplugs-7-P... I was forced into using them by an inconsiderate neighbor. He kept putting his dog out into the back yard very early every morning ... in response the dog would loudly whine and bark until let back in. Thankfully the dog is long gone.
- collyw 9y ago
  Throwing a cup of water over barking dogs tends to shut them up.
Hydraulix989 9y ago
Howard Leight MAX earplugs have the highest noise cancellation rating in dB that I've seen, and they were the best ones I've tried. Works for me, I live right below my landlord who has an uncarpeted wooden floor with kids, where otherwise I'd have the sound of incessant stomping upstairs as a very reliable daily alarm clock.
closeparen 9y ago
A fan. I sleep like a baby with an extremely loud fan roaring in my face, as long as the noise is consistent. Sort of like being in an airplane. Would you fall asleep with someone whispering in your ear? Earplugs can only reduce the intensity of sounds, but the distracting part is the detail/variation/information in them. Even in a quiet room, putting in earplugs guarantees I will stay awake listening to my own heartbeat and blood flow in excruciating detail. shudder. A sufficiently loud drone noise, on the other hand, drowns out any of the more variable noises that would keep me awake.
- workerIbe 9y ago
  Agreed, I contribute a good chunk of the quality of my sleep to my fan.
- lozf 9y ago
  If you have sox (free, cross platform, open source) installed, you can run e.g.: play -n synth 08:00:00 pinknoise for 8 hours of noise -- you might prefer either whitenoise or brownnoise, and maybe play around with the eq or other effect options to modulate the output if you want a little variation. If you skip the duration it'll play til you ^C.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Or ocean waves with sox: play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth sine amod 0.3 10 Via: https://askubuntu.com/a/789472/111115 https://askubuntu.com/a/789472/111115
elcapitan 9y ago
People have mentioned headphones/earphones and earplugs, but you can actually combine the two. Take in-ear earphones, take off the thin rubber plugs on their end. Cut off the earplugs to the size (or 1.5x) of those rubber plugs. Then compress the earplugs to coin-flatness, and punch a thin hole through them 2mm or so. Put them on the earphones. As with earplugs, press them before inserting, then wait a few seconds for them to decompress in your ears. I've used that in the past before I got Bose active noise cancelling phones. They work basically as good as unpunched earplugs, but you can add white noise or music or whatever on top of that. Edit: Found that (of course) someone made a video of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m_RseMrok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m_RseMrok

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

I guess it's once again time for my standard PSA response to this genre: various chronic medical conditions can interfere with sleep. If you consistently have trouble sleeping or sleeping well over an extended period of time, it very well could be something more than "poor sleep habits".

funkyy 9y ago
And it very well couldn't. Slapping medical name to everything is not a solution either. Sometimes sleep disorder is as little as the wrong diet.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  Sometimes people are speaking from direct experience with well-validated medical conditions fucking up their lives for multiple decades until someone eventually bothered to actually order the relevant diagnostic test.
  - Hydraulix989 9y ago
    Like sleep apnea: A lot of doctors mistakenly think that only overweight people can have sleep apnea. I am 6' 150 lbs and was tired my whole life until I INSISTED I get a sleep study. Turns out I had severe sleep apnea.
    - swah 9y ago
      And the solution is to sleep with a CPAP? Could I just rent one and check if I wake up more rested? Does snoring correlate with sleep apnea?
      - Hydraulix989 9y ago
        Snoring definitely correlates with apnea (your airway is already narrowing enough to "snore"). You could rent one but you wouldn't know the optimal pressure settings without a titration sleep study. You could try renting an auto adjusting machine and set the window wide open so that min pressure is the lowest possible value and Max pressure is the highest. Then if you look at the data and see that the machine had to increase the pressure while you slept with it on, you know you had a disordered breathing event(s). The machine reports back AHI but it really means that you stopped breathing and the machine couldn't treat you effectively because the pressure wasn't set correctly, but it doesn't report apneas that you would have had without wearing the machine to begin with because at pressure, it has no way of knowing/measuring them, if that makes sense.

caio1982 9y ago

It actually does not tell how to sleep, it only discusses common sense strategies like taking melatonine and avoiding (or not) caffeine. Kind of a let down.

branchless 9y ago

This is an interesting article if only for the nugget that only 1% think they function well on 4-5 hours (though they may be mistaken). The title isn't great - it cautions against common fallacies about aids to sleeping.

rrggrr 9y ago

1. Room temperature should be between 60 - 67 degrees F. 2. No electronics, games, and minimal to no blue light 30min to 1hour before sleep. 3. Do not exercise less than 3 hours before sleep. Exception: sex. 4. Coffee and other stimulants before 12pm, not after. 5. Avoid naps longer than 15 minutes day of. 6. Stretch before going to sleep, particularly if you experience minor restless legs or periodic leg movements. 7. Avoid alcohol, will reduce sleep quality. 8. Avoid stimulating TV, conversations or books before sleep. 9. Controversial: Sleep in late if you can. Adequate sleep is more important than consistent sleep rhythm. My opinion only.

Teichopsia 9y ago
3- unless one is a woman. From my limited understanding, men get sleepy and women get 'activated' (lack for a better word).
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  I've seen a good number of data points to the contrary in one particular situation. There was an article about a vibrator alarm clock promoting starting the day with an orgasm, and pretty much every women commenting on the article mentioned how stupid an idea that seemed because they said it would put them right back to sleep.
  - Teichopsia 9y ago
    I figured as much, that's why I said "my limited understanding" (for those who love downvoting and not explaining). For the commenters below, true. Thanks for the replies all of you.
- csa 9y ago
  As an anecdotal contrast, I (male) get activated even when I'm very tired beforehand.
- blunte 9y ago
  My "observations" from a "few" samples with a lot of data points is that females get very sleepy after quality #3.

RandomInteger4 9y ago

I'm not sure what the long term effects of chronic melatonin supplementation are, but I'll find out eventually. I've been taking between 3-6mg of melatonin every night for the past few years (2011?) It's almost required. Without it my sleep cycle seems fine at first, but then gets out of whack as I can't seem to keep a circadian rhythm in line with the rest of society / the earth's rotation. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I can't function mentally without caffeine. I tried going off caffeine a few times, and while the withdrawal effects were horrible, they eventually passed and everything felt great except my ability to concentrate on anything. Sadly I can't afford to see a doctor for my ADHD meds. While caffeine helps, it still leaves much to be desired. Exercise helps immensely, both in terms of sleep and ability to concentrate, but at some point I injured my upper back (rhomboids and rotator cuff muscles), so I can't get the same level of exercise I had before.

htk 9y ago
I share the habits (melatonin, caffeine and exercise) and eventual strategies (coffee withdrawal from time to time). Would you care to elaborate on your methods? (What time do you take melatonin, how much and at what time do you take coffee?) Thanks!
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  For caffeine, I'm probably consuming way too much. I use french roast (less caffeine + less acid) with an espresso machine (course grind folgers rather than fine grind). I think it comes out to roughly slightly less than 1.5 cups (12 fluid ounces) per dose. I take a dose within about 1 - 1.5 hours of waking up and another dose half way through the day. I need to start taking the second dose earlier so 1) I don't experience the mid day crash and 2) there's less in my system when I go to bed. For melatonin I take 3mg about an hour or two before going to bed and another 3mg right before going to bed. Sleep is generally good, but not as much as I would like, which I think is partly due to going to bed too late, thus light entering my room due to insufficient window blackout methods. Something weird I notice about melatonin is that it helps me get work done just before bed, because my mind thinks less about it and just does it, but this probably isn't the best way to work.

ashark 9y ago

1) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 2) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 3) no glowing screens at all after the sun goes down. 4) very low candle-temperature lighting only after dark. Especially try to keep it out of your direct line of sight. It'll work, but 1-3 are hard.

nemasu 9y ago
Hmm, can people reasonably do 1-3 in places where the sun sets at like 6PM?
- Bakary 9y ago
  There are tools that reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen. They essentially turn your screen orange. The difference it makes is large enough that you wonder how you managed before it. The most well known is f.lux, but it's also natively supported in some phone OSes.
  - casicone 9y ago
    Windows 10 also has this feature built in, called Night light, in the Display settings.
  - theWatcher37 9y ago
    Native in iOS, OSX, and windows now. Probably on android.
  - Kostic 9y ago
    Also available in GNOME 3, on Linux, under the name of 'Night Light'[0]. [0] https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/attachment/night-light/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/attac...
  - TremendousJudge 9y ago
    I use f.lux, it's fantastic: https://justgetflux.com/ https://justgetflux.com/ Much better than the native solutions that come with operating systems nowadays

xupybd 9y ago

>So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them least likely to lie about being sick when they want to skip work. Or maybe people who were already sick with some chronic condition were sleeping more than that—or less—as a result of their illness. Statistics are tough to interpret. Love that, no lazy journalism, no ridiculous claims. Just the facts and some possible implications.

Shank 9y ago
From The Atlantic, I expected a little more science and a little more suggestion from this article. This read more as a summary of all of the little sleep tips I've seen and heard anecdotally over the last few years rolled into one summary. Not exactly on the same level as "When Your Child Is a Psychopath" or "My Family's Slave" (two very recent and exceptionally great articles from The Atlantic).
- soperj 9y ago
  I really wonder about the "When Your Child is a Psychopath" one, it was a good story and all, but I wonder how many people read that article and like me left feeling like "I can relate". As a kid in pre-school, I pissed in another kids face. In elementary I ripped a kid's eyelid off, and pulled another kid's leg through a bike lock station and then broke it amongst many other things. I never hurt a teacher, but I was under a hundred pounds in gr.6. If I had matured earlier I can't say that I wouldn't have, since they definitely manhandled me after every fight I got into. I remember another parent saying that when I grew up I was either going to be in jail for mass murder, or the prime minister, as if there were no other option. I wonder how many other people did similar things as a kid and turned out completely ordinary.
  - imesh 9y ago
    What makes you ordinary?
    - hueving 9y ago

ysavir 9y ago

The article mentions William Dement, one of the pioneer researchers on sleep. His book The Promise of Sleep is a great and easy read, and I absolutely recommend it for anyone looking to learn more about the subject and the history behind the study of sleep.

mythrwy 9y ago

I've had great luck with these videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7OGw1QS9JI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7OGw1QS9JI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTAwdgf1nZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTAwdgf1nZE I went through a phase a few years ago where I'd fall asleep only to wake up a short time later with mind racing, then be up half the night and tired the next day. This went on for some months and was very annoying. These videos cured that phase right away. I don't listen to them much anymore but they really worked. It wasn't just staying asleep that was cured, the quality of the sleep seemed much better. Still listen on occasion if having trouble getting in "sleep mode".

teolandon 9y ago
Is it weird that these videos never work for me? I haven't tried these particular ones, but I've had tons of troubles sleeping through the years, and hypnosis audios never works. It actually gets me frustrated and keeps me up longer.
- tomcam 9y ago
  No it's not. Me too
chillwaves 9y ago
This is my favorite, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXlScN9AO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXlScN9AO0 Had severe insomnia a few years ago. The video is soothing and the self talk helped calm me down, so even if I didn't sleep I experienced less stress (which helped me sleep).

teolandon 9y ago

My biggest struggle with sleep is that I'm always excited to do stuff, and always feel like I'm not done with my day. Exceptions are when something happens and I end up feeling very depressed during the day, and simply want to shut down and do nothing. Usually, I get so infatuated with a script I'm writing, a new program I discovered, a bug that I need to resolve, a book that I'm reading, some concept that I'm thinking of, that my mind just keeps on being active, and wants to keep working. It's the worst when I'm working on my computer, due to the blue light (I've started wearing yellow sunglasses to minimize the effect), while it's a bit better when I'm reading or listening to music or thinking. In any case, this is a great article. I feel like small amounts of sleep has been the greatest inhibitor of my performance in... anything really. Being dumb and young I felt like I could still function correctly, but I really started noticing that I had better tournament results when actually sleeping 8 hours, while my results on all other days were lackluster. I read up on a lot of things and convinced myself that sleeping enough is essential. I still slip up and don't even go on my bed at the right times, my sleep schedule goes all over the place for a lot of different reasons, but I'm really trying. I feel like I might need to seek some professional help on this, but I'll still take it as far as possible before that.

problems 9y ago
I'm in the same boat here actually. If I actually feel like going to sleep at the correct time I feel like I'm just not getting any value out of my life unless there's something that interests me at all times. I just keep pounding caffeine and it really doesn't bug me. I'm sure my performance in just about everything has dropped significantly, but eh, I'm in a fairly secure situation now, so I feel like value out of my life vs performance in tasks I don't really like that much... I'll take the value usually.
- teekert 9y ago
  I feel the same, and I always seem to be able to drop that rushed feeling after about 3-4 days of holiday. Just being in nature first make me feel I should be doing something useful but after a couple of days the more relaxed mindset kicks in. I become a nicer person to be around, I'm better at handling my kids (I'm less emotional, more calm) and I start to live more slowly. The relationship with my wife also flourishes under such circumstances. That feeling we create, of urgency, of pressure to perform, of setting the bar so high we almost always fail our own big plans, is really damaging I think. It's very healthy to feel content with oneself, to be proud and calm, to feel like you are doing well.

manibatra 9y ago

Personally the change that has helped me the most has been mental. I used to feel "guilty" of going to bed early, not working to exhaustion. Now I view sleep as something to enjoy. Just letting go of that guilt has me sleep a lot better. From being a light sleeper I have gone to be able to sleep through my housemates blaring loud music.

ericdykstra 9y ago

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day. Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul. Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled. Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry. Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues! But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/2 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/2

Izmaki 9y ago

Reading this on Monday morning already late for work and wondering when I can have a nap...

kutkloon7 9y ago

Great article. I especially like the interpretation of the statistics by the author, which is, well, hardly any interpretation at all: "One 2014 study of more than 3,000 people in Finland found that the amount of sleep that correlated with the fewest sick days was 7.63 hours a night for women and 7.76 hours for men. So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them least likely to lie about being sick when they want to skip work. Or maybe people who were already sick with some chronic condition were sleeping more than that—or less—as a result of their illness. Statistics are tough to interpret." Contrasted with articles that take one example (a 94-year old making a breakthrough in some field) and directly generalize it ("to be a genius, think like a 94-year-old"), this is a much healthier and saner approach to interpreting statistics. (I didn't make this example up; it was on hacker news)

tie_ 9y ago
Same here. Really impressed how the author restrained themselves from jumping into the most intuitive conclusion, and instead quoted a few other plausible alternatives. We need more of that!

bojanvidanovic 9y ago

One of my cousins is in that 1% of people. He sleeps 4-5 hours a night and stays hyperactive all day. I'm so jealous of him!

GoToRO 9y ago

If you have problem sleeping do this: there will be some times when you will sleep better. What you have to do is go back 3-7 days and see what you did in those days and do more of that regularly.

KennyCason 9y ago

> The original studies seemed to say yes. But when the military put soldiers in a lab to make certain they stayed awake, performance suffered. One minor piece of anecdotal evidence here. I have done a few 5-6 day sleep deprivation experiments in my life. I've stayed up for 3 days more times than I can count. I also used to regularly sleep every other day for long chunks of time. It's something that I could do much better when I was younger, and I try to avoid this now as I regularly get sick when I don't sleep for extended periods of time nowadays. Firstly, performance (particularly my short term memory) always suffered. Sometimes if not active, or sitting for long periods of time I'd also get pain in my joints. Typically, when I fall asleep or start feeling tired it's because I enter a small boring, quiet homely environment (i.e. go home, or sit in a quiet room, or watch tv). My secret to staying awake was constant activity like walking around, talking to people, hydrating (water), small snacks, and walking some more, etc. I feel that the effects of sleep deprivation hit the hardest when I'm not being stimulated physically. As such, I think dragging someone into a lab would have a harsh effect on one's performance. While I think no matter what you will suffer from performance degradation, I would love to see some contrast between performance given different environments/habits.

OJFord 9y ago

> In 2013, a 24-year-old advertising copywriter in Indonesia died after prolonged sleep deprivation, collapsing a few hours after tweeting “30 hours of working and still going strooong.” She went into a coma and died the next morning. Things like this always slightly scare me. I have been awake consecutively for far longer, and on several occasions. But does that mean I just can - or would I really be risking death each time?

Asooka 9y ago
The article suggests his death was due to a combination of too much energy drinks and a preexisting mild heart condition. If you get regular checkups you should be probably mostly fine for a while until you get weakened by old age and can't do it any more. That is not to say that it's at all recommended. I personally absolutely cannot stay awake for more than 20 hours.

esseti 9y ago

"Or, sometimes preferable, read something on paper.". Now, to read on paper we need light, so the problem is not solved (altought the ligth is not directly from the device into the eyes). But the real question is, if I use the kindle with its light that lights up the screen, will it be the same as using a phone? or what?

arsenico 9y ago
Kindle Paperwhite as well as latest Kobos and other advanced e-readers are totally different from phone or tablet screens by the way they illuminate.
pizza 9y ago
The color temperature of a phone backlight and ordinary household lighting are fairly different
- anothercomment 9y ago
  Ordinary household lighting is more and more being replaced by LEDs, though.

drukenemo 9y ago

A recent TED I watched linked sleep deprivation with the speed one can develop Alzheimer https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_genova_what_you_can_do_to_prevent_alzheimer_s https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_genova_what_you_can_do_to_pre...

ziglef 9y ago

I consider myself one of those short-sleepers. Ever since I was a kid I averaged 5-6h of sleep a day. While the differences perceived (which can always be misleading) from sleeping 6 or 8 hours weren't noticeable, if I slept 4-5 for a week my short term memory would suffer, reflexes and split second decision making (think fast passed multiplayer shooters) would also suffer. But what I noticed was that although the split second decision process would come back after a good night sleep, short memory would take me a whole 3-4 days to come back at its finest. Obviously this is all what I observed and not to be taken seriously, because as we know observing and understanding oneself is one of the hardest tasks out there. Just my 2c

chippy 9y ago
Interesting 2c about observations - because according the article, people who have less sleep may perform worse objectively, but to themselves they report no noticeable difference.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  Short term memory variation is very obvious to me when coding. And as the GP mentioned, reflex variation can be obvious when playing FPS games.
  - chippy 9y ago
    I wonder what tasks the subjects were given in the studies. slightly related - I seem to remember a study on the performance of hungover people. Hungover people self-reported that they performed worse, but objectively there was no negative change! (edits...or thinking about it some more, maybe the thing was that they had Common Colds)

mansilladev 9y ago

How not to sleep: /this I read this article 8 hours ago. Now I'm in bed, staring at this screen, typing this comment at 5 AM.

anothercomment 9y ago
Actually, you are only dreaming this :-)
- teddyh 9y ago
  http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-office-mandatory-nap-time http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-office-mandatory-nap-...

chippy 9y ago

My "One Simple Trick" to help limit active thinking when in bed, and thus make it easier to sleep is to write the thoughts down, pen on paper. By thinking I mean things like being excited about an event, going over a conversation, thinking about some code, an idea, things to do tomorrow, errands etc. All things that can be literally dumped onto paper and stored. In my experience I have found that pen and paper work better than typing into a device. Now, I still seem to wake up multiple times during the night, but it's not because my brain is excited anymore.

jedisct1 9y ago

I don't have a computer at home any more. Granted, the office is at walking distance, and I can go there 24/7, but not having a computer at home recently made a huge difference. Once I go back home, I don't have the temptation of hacking something really quick, which will eventually last longer that expected, and I'll then keep thinking about it all night long. Verdict? Better sleep. And I can get up earlier. Overall I feel better and more productive, if only because there is a better separation between work (including on OSS projects) and personal life.

wakkaflokka 9y ago

I could write an essay about my battle with sleep. I'm in my 30's and I finally think it's solved. Sleeping meds, sleep studies, CBT-I, you name it - I've done it. My ultimate solution ended up being: - Earplugs - Exercise - Waking up the same time every single day, no matter how late I stay up. CBT-I had me wake up at 6:30 am every morning, and go to bed at 1 am. After a week of exhaustion, I started falling asleep like a rock. Then my therapist gradually had me go to sleep earlier and earlier until my time-to-sleep was still short and I had few awakenings during the night, but felt refreshed the next day. Turned out to be just around 6.5 hours a night - No coffee after 3 pm There are still nights where I have an active mind and have trouble sleeping, but I'll just let it happen without constantly worrying "oh no, I'm not gonna get ___ hours of sleep tonight". Because the minute you try to force yourself to sleep, it's over.

voidz 9y ago
Earplugs are my #1 life changer when it comes to sleep. I found these really soft ones that don't really get in the way when you're lying on one ear, they filter pretty much all of the sound and when I take them out the next day, my ears don't hurt. As it turns out my wife's breathing kept me kind of awake, and traffic sounds too. And now that I got used to it, thanks to the associativity of the brain, these days I fall asleep within 10 minutes of putting them in. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I do need sleep meds to just tip me over into actual sleep. But if there's one thing I can recommend to other people is to spend some time to really find your own suitable ear plugs. I'm just lucky my wife is ok with it, she doesn't have these sleeping problems and is on stanby for if our boy might wake up in the night... Which almost never happens.
- iman453 9y ago
  Could you tell me which earplugs you use and how you went about finding the right ones?
  - alltakendamned 9y ago
    I use the foam earplugs from Quies. https://www.quies.com/product/foam-earplugs/ https://www.quies.com/product/foam-earplugs/

smartbit 9y ago

William Dement gave a Google Tech talk on September 23, 2008. Dement recalls that Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 11 days in 1964, when asked some 40years later "would you do this again?" he replied "No way would I do this again" [0] Very interesting from Dement's talk is that equilibrium daily average sleep for completely health young adults is 8:15 ± 50min [1]. Most people I meet contest these results and state that they can work optimal with less than 7h25m daily sleep. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=1310 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=1310 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=28m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=28m29s

bobjordan 9y ago

My experience with Melatonin is that about 1.5 mg per night is a game changer. I travel across the Pacific Ocean several times per year and it got to where I was a stick of dynamite temper wise for a week after each trip, just not able to cope with any irritations, due to Jetlag. On top of that, just the general stress of being an entrepreneur resulted in bad sleep. For some reason, I bought the melatonin, and I'm very glad I did it. Now, I sleep like I did when I was in elementary school. Lots of dreams and even wake up with solutions to problems that I went to bed thinking about.

bhavyapruthi 9y ago

"Dolphins are said to sleep with only half their brain at a time, keeping partially alert for predators. Many of us spend much of our lives in a similar state." This is definitely deep.

m-j-fox 9y ago

Whatever you do, don't click the video at the bottom of the article unless you have a few hours to kill. Dr. James is an impossibly engaging and fun-to-watch youtuber and there goes my memorial day.

lphnull 9y ago

I'm 30 years old now. I was able to live on 4-6 hrs of sleep a night all the way up to age 25-28. That's when sleep started becoming a problem. At age 30, I absolutely need 8 hours of sleep minimum average of sleep, but that average has to be accumulated over the course of a week! That means that a single night of sleeping less and doing strenuous tasks on a linux terminal now takes a toll on me in ways that I have never felt before in my youth. Full disclaimer: I am a blue collar worker at a non-computer job who physically excerts myself and am very fit as a result of my job. This is part of why sleep is mandatory for me. The older you get, the more sleep you need and the less alcohol your body can handle. This is a universal truth that people <age 25 have a hard time accepting because everybody has to be a superman of course.

dpark 9y ago
> The older you get, the more sleep you need This isn't true. Need for sleep declines with age. Youth masks the effects of poor sleep in the same way it masks poor eating and lack of exercise. But young people need more sleep, not less.

notyourloops 9y ago

I had trouble with insomnia until I took up the practice of meditation. It was not my intention to solve my insomnia via meditation, but that's what happened incidentally.

bewe42 9y ago

I can recommend "The effortless sleep method" by S. Stephens.

brw12 9y ago
Can you say more about it?

michaele 9y ago

Try 15-20 minutes of meditation right before you go to bed. I find it slows my mind, decreases stress and prepares my body to sleep deeply and well.

michaele 9y ago

Try meditation, 15-20 minutes before you go to bed. I find it helps calm my mind and prepares my body for a deep restful sleep.

TheAdamist 9y ago

New to sleeping with people, I find the actual sleeping part the tricky bit. Not my expectation at all.

herbcso 9y ago

Is nobody else concerned with the implications of what losing sleep does to the doctor going through residency? I've always thought that was insane. The author even admits to having observed the detrimental effects first-hand, yet never suggests that this practice should be abandoned - why is that!? I as a patient have enough of a problem giving myself into the care of a doctor-in-training, why does s/he have to sleep-deprived on top of not being fully trained? Is this some sort of macho thing, or a "well, I went through this hazing, so you gotta do it, too" kind of thing? Somebody please enlighten me as to what the point of this seemingly counter-productive practice is!

diyseguy 9y ago

For those struggling with caffeine addiction and poor sleep I strongly recommend rutaecarpine. Take one a few hours before bedtime and it deactivates the caffeine so you can sleep.

chillytoes 9y ago

This was a pretty weak article. Usually The Atlantic packs a powerful punch. This seemed like clickbait.

charliemol 9y ago

>In one study published in the journal Sleep, researchers kept people just slightly sleep deprived—allowing them only six hours to sleep each night—and watched the subjects’ performance on cognitive tests plummet. The crucial finding was that throughout their time in the study, the sixers thought they were functioning perfectly well. >Effective sleep habits, like many things, seem to come back to self-awareness. One of the things I've noticed is that it's really hard to police your own sleep schedule, especially if you aren't aware of the consequences of losing a few hours of sleep. I'm working on a bot that helps you get to bed earlier, and our power users often come to us with a really clear understanding of what happens when they don't get enough sleep (e.g. "I perform way worse on my Army fitness test", "I'm not focused enough to do my side project after work") and still need to set up systems to keep themselves accountable on a daily basis. That said, I think there's a much larger "zombie population" of the "sixers" described above that isn't getting enough sleep and simply isn't particularly aware of it. From a population health standpoint, the question then becomes: How do we get people to appreciate the effect of getting a full 7-9 hours of sleep when they don't explicitly feel the effects on a daily basis? Not only that, but how do we get them to unwind and prioritize getting good night's sleep at the time of day when willpower is low and Netflix temptations are high. The CEO of Netflix somewhat flippantly declared sleep their biggest competition, and I think they're crushing the competition right now. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/netflix-downloads-sleep-biggest-competition-video-streaming-ceo-reed-hastings-amazon-prime-sky-go-a7690561.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... On the bright side there are people who have used our product and seen it make a pretty big difference. The trick was getting them to start with a very unambitious bedtime goal relative to their average bedtime, and gradually make the bedtime earlier week over week until they've dismantled their bad sleep habits.

tempodox 9y ago

Finally. Mankind exists for almost a million years, but only now are we taught how to sleep. Seriously, how did our ancestors survive?