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Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

417 points by dalfonso 9y ago

k__ 9y ago
I stopped setting an alarm 90% of my nights and ended up with 10h sleep (2-12) till I wake up by myself.
harryf 9y ago
By use of meditation and yoga I've found the opposite to be true. The system I've used is described somewhat here http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-healthy-tips-to-reduce-your-sleep-quota/ http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-he... Edit: downvotes why?
- Mefis 9y ago
  I didn't down vote you,but just skimming through your article, #9 seems false. Blood is not affected by magnetic fields, it seems to me. https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-blood-attracted-to-a-magnet-since-it-contains-iron https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-blood-attracted-to-a-magnet-s...
  - harryf 9y ago
    I can't attest for that point scientifically or even personally. The argument in #9 as I understand it is, over the course of your lifetime, the cumulative minuscule effect of how you sleep relative to the Earths magnetic field can have a negative effect on your health, increasing the risk of stroke or brain related conditions. To prove or disprove would require long term study (in the order of a human lifetime) with equipment capable of detecting very small changes while eliminating all other effects.
- n4r9 9y ago
  I wouldn't downvote you (even if I could) for adding to the discussion, but this certainly isn't the sort of content I come to HN to explore. Outlandish claims without anything to back them up.
  - harryf 9y ago
    Fair enough. Can only back up with personal experience at this point. "It works for me"
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  I didn’t downvote you but claiming meditation and yoga substitutes for sleep pattern matches to quack/idiot. Your link has the word guru in it which points the same way. Personally I find it credible because I’ve read studies before suggesting meditation can substitute for sleep 1 for 1 up to some threshold but I’m too lazy to search for them. If you make claims that are as credible as a homeopath or anti-vaxxer cite something that at least looks credible.
  - harryf 9y ago
    Fair enough. Was in a hurry. Was obviously a topic that needs more detail. Have also seen those studies (via HN) - in fact they were what originally got me curious about meditation about 5 years ago. Meanwhile the guru in question is one that gets invited to Talk at Google, if that's any measure of credibility - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn8X4FbpTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn8X4FbpTM
pascalxus 9y ago
the article states 7 hours is the minimum, but I seem to need a lot more. they state, if you can sleep after the alarm clock goes off, then you should sleep more. So, what if you get 8.5 hours of sleep but you still could sleep, after the alarm clock goes off? there should be some upper limit, maybe 9?
- mikebridgman 9y ago
  The article states 7 to 9 hours.
- ForRealsies 9y ago
  I recommend a 'Sleep' app on your phone. I set it to 7am and it'll wake me up anywhere from 6:30-7, depending on my sleep cycle. Never felt drowsy on 6:30 days.
  - givinguflac 9y ago
    This works well for me (I use ‘sleep cycle’) but doesn’t solve my inability to actually get tired and go to bed at night.
    - thirdsun 9y ago
      Have you tried avoiding screens an hour or two before going to bed? Fill that time with reading or listening to podcasts.
      - pascalxus 9y ago
        podcasts are awesome - we're kinda in a golden age for it.
      - arvinsim 9y ago
        Does the Kindle still count? I heard that it is different from computer screens because the light is backlit, not directly shown into your eyes.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I don't you can generalize things like this. I am sure there are people who can get by on 6 hours or less naturally. But the problem starts when people who need more try force themselves to sleep less. I have done a lot experimentation with this and had to accept that the only sustainable way for me is to sleep around 8 hours every night. It would be cool if I could make do with 4 but it's just not in me.
- frozenport 9y ago
  The point is that people who claim to function on six are unable to correctly judge their capabilities and are most likely wrong about that claim.
  - LogicX 9y ago
    Anecdote is not data, but I have not set an alarm for many years - I sleep 5-6 hours (only 5 since I went vegan) and I wake up on my own, refreshed. Occasionally I’m tired, I take a nap. I don’t do coffee, I have unsweetened tea but don’t go nuts on caffeine, social drinking. I don’t feel any need to ‘sleep in’ on weekends. Yes, I work from home and own my own company, so I have the luxury of taking a nap in the middle of the day. If I were to try to force myself to sleep 8 or 9 hours I feel worse; so I don’t do that anymore.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Good for you. When I was working from home I never used an alarm either and woke up every day around 7:30 no matter when I went to bed.
    - sethrin 9y ago
      I'm in the same boat, working from home to no one else's schedule, but probably with a worse habit of body. I have no idea when I might last have slept for more than seven hours, and I very rarely nap. I'm considering acquiring a 'real job' again, but I'm probably not willing to ever compromise my sleep habits for an employer. I don't think anyone else should either, but I suspect that's not likely to be a popular opinion.
Danihan 9y ago
I'm extremely productive on 4.5 hours, but using a biphasic sleep pattern. 3 hours at night, 1.5 hours in a daytime nap.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  How long have you been sleeping like that?
  - Danihan 9y ago
    About 1.5 years, give or take. I pretty much require 9 hours on a monophasic schedule to feel as sharp.
    - dapreja 9y ago
      Ok Neo, how about sending us pictures of the matrix source when you get the chance.
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      Yeah, I worry, this only gets rid of tiredeness but not fulfill the whole 8-9 hours of sleep.
      - Danihan 9y ago
        From my experience, I'm better rested now than I was before I went bi-phasic. I personally believe sleep is simply a cleaning cycle for the brain, waiting 16 hours between cleaning cycles may be deleterious.
        Ygg2 9y ago
        I wasn't speaking about better rested vs less rested. You can totally lose symptoms of tiredness, only to wind up with dementia at later point in life.
        9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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imustbeevil 9y ago
> the Foundation suggests anywhere from six hours to 11 hours of sleep per night for individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 may be suitable, or six hours to 10 hours for those between the ages of 26 and 64. A four to five hour deviation is quite significant. That's a difference of 80% between the most amount of sleep needed and the least. > "I suppose the rule of thumb in adults is about seven to eight hours, but is that based on any really solid science? I would sort of say not," said Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience and head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-different-people-need-different-amounts-of-sleep https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-dif...
- deleted 9y ago
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- SebNag_ 9y ago
  Scientific sources? > Prescribing one amount of sleep for every kind of person seems very obviously wrong. That's, AFAIK, not.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
peterwwillis 9y ago
Sleep need is variable, work is variable, motivation is variable. It's more likely that sleep is a spectrum, hence the 8.34% variance in required minimum sleep for adults, or how general quality of health affects ability to maintain sleep. It's even possible that sleep has nothing to do with our health and productivity other than being an indicator of it, and not necessarily a cause for it. Thanks, pseudo-scientific studies.
- ryanbrunner 9y ago
  This is all true, but I think it's worthwhile to be very skeptical about your assumption of how much sleep is healthy for you. Everyone in these threads assumes that they are one of the special few who does perfectly fine on 5 hours of sleep.
supernintendo 9y ago
This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleeping habits. I'd love to get 7-9 hours of sleep, but I just don't have the time.
- lutorm 9y ago
  Actually, studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies spent much less than 40h/week "working" and had more leisure time than we do. It's just recent history that's an anomaly...
  - ksk 9y ago
    Why is it important that studies have shown a particular result?
    - bluGill 9y ago
      Because only well designed studies can show a truth. It is obviously the case that when you drop a big rock and a little rock at the same time the big rock will hit the ground first. Because we have a study we know this to be false even though it is obvious.
      - Cyph0n 9y ago
        Well, that particular scenario is false only when there is no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?). More importantly, it wasn't just a "study" that figured out the law of gravitation.
        dctoedt 9y ago
        > no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?) In 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott repeated the experiment on the lunar surface with a hammer and a feather. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_P... (includes a link to a video clip; jump to about 0:35).
zitterbewegung 9y ago
I feel like when I get 8-9 I am much more productive and have a much better mood. Seven for me is sort of the point where I can go throughout the day but I will be distracted. Six or less is really bad for me. I really notice when I get less sleep I make a bunch more comments on HN / reddit or use Twitter much more.
- passivepinetree 9y ago
  Likely because you're less focused/more susceptible to the quick reward and novelty that these sites provide. I've noticed when I sleep better I can better focus on long-form entertainment (reading a novel vs. browsing HN, for example).
rightos 9y ago
But do I need to be more productive? It's a tradeoff - I can go home and spend more social time, leisure time and put more personal time into my projects if I sleep less. The 2-3 hours of extra time I get by sleeping like crap allows me to do things I wouldn't otherwise get to do. Productivity couldn't improve these if there's no time left in the day to do them. It costs me at work, I'm sure of it, but it hasn't gotten me fired or even significantly prevented me from doing my job, so why would I change it? There's no need to be obsessed with scraping every last ounce of productivity out of myself at work. I like my job, but feel no obligation for that.
- jules 9y ago
  If you are X% less productive you will be able to charge X% less for your work, on average, so you would need to work longer hours for the same pay. You might also be shortening your life by not sleeping enough, perhaps by a larger amount than you're gaining by sleeping less. That is clearly the case in the limit of not sleeping at all -- you would shorten your life to a month at best, not to mention that the quality of life would go down.
  - rightos 9y ago
    > If you are X% less productive you will be able to charge X% less for your work, on average, so you would need to work longer hours for the same pay. That's making the huge assumption that you're willing to constantly seek your maximum pay and that you get paid solely for your measurable productivity output, which is in my experience very rarely the case. More often than not you get paid based on capabilities and responsibilities, not significantly more or less on your output. It's certainly not a direct X% less productive = X% less pay relationship. I believe it's been shown that seeking new employers is the best way to maximize pay, but that means interviews are often the difference between you and more pay, yet no one can judge future productivity in an interview. > you would shorten your life to a month at best To my knowledge, sleep dep hasn't actually killed people directly like this, they simply start sleeping.
    - jane_pl 9y ago
epc 9y ago
If you feel groggy in the morning or just not well–rested even after 7-8 hours sleep, get your sinuses & lungs checked. Could be sleep apnea, but in my case I felt congested all the time. What I thought was allergies was actually the linings of my sinuses inflamed to the point of closing off air passages. Unclear if the root cause in my case was acid-reflux into the sinus cavities or exposure to dust from ground zero. The resulting surgery kind of sucked (free tip: don't have your sinuses roto-rootered in the winter) but ever since I've been able to sleep a solid 6-7 hours every night. I now wake up rested, don't feel groggy, typically without an alarm.
- nikkwong 9y ago
  I was just diagnosed with sleep apnea this week after it wreaked havoc on my personal and professional life for the last 6. I couldn't work, couldn't engage in anything. Now I'm pretty much terrified to go to sleep every night as I know I'm probably not going to get any rest and wake up zombified. I heard the surgery was a hit or miss. Would you recommend?
  - rhcom2 9y ago
    CPAP is usually the first line for sleep apnea. I've been using one for the past couple of months. They've improved the masks so the really only annoyance is being tethered to the machine when you roll over but it isn't too bad. Another thing I've learned is the CPAP machines now phone home to the insurance company to give them compliance data on how and when you use the machine. Less happy about that.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      You have a free market in healthcare, vote with your wallet.
      - rhcom2 9y ago
        I'd love to but the thing's base price is $800 without hoses or mask. I can't afford that without going through my insurance.
ams6110 9y ago
I feel like my natural body clock is a 28-hour day. If I have no reason to get up I'll sleep for about 10 hours, but then I'm not ready to sleep again for about 18 hours. I'm guessing the 10 hours is just making up for sleep debt and that might taper off if I could sleep as much as I wanted every night. But the realities of life (kids in school, work, kid's activities, etc.) mean that I have to be awake by about 6:45am and being in bed and asleep before 10:00 just doesn't happen very often either.
- and0 9y ago
  I'm the same way. Back when I used to have summer breaks (highschool / college if I didn't have a part-time gig) my days would start 2 hours later every day. So I'd wake up at 8, then 10, then 12... until I was fully nocturnal. But then 4-5 days later I was back to waking up in the morning.
- ashark 9y ago
  I used to think that about myself. Now I'm pretty sure it's just the result of having light pollution (lights outside candle temperature and brighter than three or four candles) including glowing screens, electronic device hyperstimulation, and the Internet info treadmill, after 9:00 or so. If I give myself a good long stretch of low light and no electronic toys my "28-hour clock" not-so-mysteriously turns into an ordinary 24-hour one. Being outdoors and active as much as possible during daylight hours also helps (especially in Summer, when dark hours are in short supply).
  - randcraw 9y ago
    My natural day lasts considerably more than 24 hours, but only when TV/video is active. Without them, I'm ready for bed by 10 PM. If I still had any working grey cells, I'd run some week-long A/B experiments to verify and assess the impact of each. But I don't think I could live with all that silence, so...
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Why not sleep 8 hours a day if needed (Personally, I'm even more useless on less than 7-8 hrs of sleep)? I am sure you can reinvent the wheel and then some in what's left. People are productive when they are productive, you can come up with the idea to change the world in 60 mins...or never in your lifetime. If Einstein had lived to 150 it's not a given that his contribution to the would would have 2X...
justherefortart 9y ago
I've slept roughly 9 hours every night my entire life. I can't imagine giving up good sleep for anything. Hell, going to bed is usually my favorite thing to do outside of hobbies.
imustbeevil 9y ago
I'm much more interested in why a body needs an amount of sleep, what processes it is conducting, and how you can affect those processes. What happens in the 7th hour that didn't happen in the 6th? If it's a fourth REM cycle, why do we need 4? What does the fourth do that the third didn't? Why do REM cycles take that long? Can you make them take more or less time? Can you determine lack of sleep from a brain scan? Can you tell the difference between a 6th hour brain and a 7th hour brain? Does anything you eat or do during a day affect how long this process takes? What about hydration / nutrition? I'm sure these are all answerable, but I'm not sure most people know the answers, and this article certainly doesn't get us any closer to understanding.
- cavanasm 9y ago
  This article isn't exactly a presentation of research. Several of those answerable questions will probably be worth Nobel Prizes for the people who can answer them. This is fundamentally a puff piece with a sleep expert promoting his new general audience book on sleep health (Not discounting the tips, or his expertise, but this is obviously not a research paper). Several of the sleep hygiene tips he gives are things that aren't really settled AFAIK in the field, possibly why he even specifically mentions "practicing what he preaches" in that last question. He's preaching at least as much as talking about settled science.
- komali2 9y ago
  This article doesn't try to, but this comment section would be a fine place for those smarter than me to drop knowledge bombs on us :D .... ... :D
- pizza 9y ago
  Pure speculation, but suppose that sleep were a cleaning process such that d(Neuron Waste Removed)/dT was a logistic curve.
njarboe 9y ago
The genetic variability of humans seems large enough that simple rules about sleep, like nutrition, are probably wrong for many people. Get more sleep if you are tired all the time? Maybe that would work.
mbertschler 9y ago
Does someone have some scientific source on that topic? I couldn't find something linked in the article.
dreamdu5t 9y ago
Not a single study or piece of research referenced by the article. "Some professor with a book says..." is not very convincing. This is not a news article, and is not journalism. This is an advertisement for a book.
a_lieb 9y ago
One important thing the article doesn't cover: we now have good reason to suspect that chronic sleep deprivation can cause brain damage. Not just a long term decrease in function, but actual cellular damage. In a major triumph of medicine, we now know that brain cells shrink during sleep (about 60% in rats), allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flow about 10 times as fast [1] [2], helping to cycle out built up toxins and waste products and eventually drain them into the bloodstream. It was previously a medical mystery how the brain was able to eliminate toxins without being connected to the lymphatic system (although it's since been shown that the brain is directly connected to the lymphatic system to some degree as well [2]) As far as I know, it's not proven that this contributes to the cognitive effects of chronic sleep deprivation. But it would make an awful lot of sense, and also help explain why sleep debt becomes more difficult to pay off the longer you let it sit around, and why the damage possibly even becomes permanent. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-brains-self-cleaning-system/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-br... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system
wtetzner 9y ago
I'm productive on six hours of sleep in the sense that I get something done. However, I am quite noticeably less productive than if I get more sleep. Even if I don't feel tired, I notice that my thoughts are more muddled and it's hard to concentrate. If I get 6 hours or less of sleep one night, it's usually not a problem. But if the lack of sleep is over multiple days (like it usually is), then it becomes much worse.
bsenftner 9y ago
What is it about those that need less? I personally have been sleeping 5-6 hours per night for decades. In my mid-30's I stopped my youthful partying and found I did not need to sleep as much. Now, at 52, more than 6 hours feel like too much and I'm groggy.
- bmelton 9y ago
  I'm in the same boat as you. You might Google for DEC2, and maybe there's even a test for it. I'm convinced I have it, and even did a 23andMe thinking they might test for it, but alas, they don't. Despite knowing that I just don't need a lot in the way of sleep, it seems that every time I make that claim, it's met with incredulity, but having worked a job for 6 years in a different time zone, and with a loose schedule, whenever I just went to bed when I got tired, and woke up when I woke up, I found that the median sleep length was in the 5-5.5 hour range.
- evanwise 9y ago
  Same. 5 to 6 hours and I feel fine, unless I'm ill or already sleep deprived. I can function on 3-4 hours per night for extended periods of time before I start to notice serious deterioration in mental faculties. I believe it's genetic. Some studies have tentatively tied naturally short sleep cycles to a gene variant (http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-by-category/insomnias/short-sleeper http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-by-category/in...). Also, my father sleeps for about the same amount of time as well.
jason_slack 9y ago
This makes me feel weird knowing that I practice a polyphasic sleep pattern for such a long time now.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
I think the headline is misleading. Let's say I stay up late to do X, Y and/or Z. These things to mean have meaning. In doing them I feel a sense of accomplishment. I've been productive. Now I show up to work the next day. Certainly less sleep has some effect on me. But that doesn't devalue the increased productivity from the previous evening. The brain is a limited resource. There might be occasional short term hacks/cheats. But on average you'll have X gallons in the mental tank. This is true. If you spend that at home then yes you will be "less productive" at work.
conistonwater 9y ago
There is a very good talk on youtube by William Dement from Stanford that is longer-form than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8
sandworm101 9y ago
>> If you were not to set an alarm clock, would you sleep past it? If the answer is yes, then there is clearly more sleep that is needed. Totally wrong. I just finished 4 months of military training. Sleep deprivation was part of the training. We were constantly sleep deprived. It impacted our performance, that was the point. That said, I'm one of those people who always seems to get up 2 minutes before the alarm. Even in my sleep-deprived state, less than four hours a night for weeks, I still woke up before my alarm.
- Rasco 9y ago
  Your point, although interesting, does not invalidate the quote. Let A be « you would sleep past the alarm clock without it » and B « you are sleep-deprived » They say A → B. You say false since I got B and not(A). A → B does not imply B → A which would be proved false by your case.
refurb 9y ago
Maybe I'm weird, but I've never deluded myself about the impact of a lack of sleep. My entire life I've strived to get 7.5 to 8 hours a night. I'm not that successful lately, but I make it a priority. What I don't get are people that brag about not getting much sleep. It's clearly unhealthy. Would you brag about your poor eating habits? Or not following a medication regimen? I know the science is still early, but I have no doubt that poor sleep has a significant, long-term, permanent impact on health.
swah 9y ago
Sometimes I can sleep over 6 hours, but then I wake up with back pain...
- undersuit 9y ago
  Sleep on your back on the floor, beds are an new invention and a bad one can be painful. So before you go out and buy a new mattress experiment with your sleep. Hammocks are also said to be a good alternative.
ohdrat 9y ago
Have gotten 6 for decades, but I used to swim/run/yoga. Now I don't do anything because there's no time and am still productive, but need lots of caffeine and morale boosters, like I traded a couple pairs loafer mesh shoes I didn't like for a high end pair of proper fitting ASIC running shoes at Nordstrom's today. In fact I lost a couple hours sleep just thinking about trading those shoes today...
lanius 9y ago
And yet South Korean students get less than 6 hours of sleep a night. Insane how society just accepts that.
martin1975 9y ago
multiple shrinks, doctors, psychiatrists, sleep therapists have told me a 7 hour minimum is required... I'm in my 40's.
sabujp 9y ago
so basically having kids makes you stupid, more prone to heart attack, etc etc
ramirez60 9y ago
I can't be alone in being exhausted at these studies. Doctors and Lawyers have spent the better part of the last century working on little to no sleep. Academics too. As an engineer, I would regularly work through little sleep because the process of loading a large project into my head to work on it would take more time than the gains from being more well rested. I'm older now, and no longer work as an engineer. I value my sleep and appreciate how much more I can task-switch on a good nights rest, but the idea that I'm not being productive when I'm grinding through work that has to get done and I'm tired seems an overwritten idea. I'm not arguing against rest and recharging and clearing your mind. I just don't see what these articles are trying to prove. When I was in college I had several stints of no sleep days to finish projects. Even into my early engineering career, I once billed 40 hours straight. Was I as "productive" per minute for that entire time as if I had slept through 5 nights? No. Would the work have gotten done faster than those 40 hours if I had slept for 8 hours in the middle a few times? No. I had a deadline, and there was nothing getting around the work needing to be done. The argument seems to be against a constant sprinting mode, which I don't think any company employs. Humans burn out after continuous work for weeks, sometimes months. But a week or 3 of little to no sleep to get through everything you need to? It's worked for a long time. Arguably building up muscle memory while forcing rote things to be learned while on little sleep works. What are we trying to prove by this? That "the man" is out to abuse workers? Of course he is. But did anyone make partner at a law firm by claiming he's going to more productive by working less? If you're goal is work life balance, go ahead. But if you're goal is to excel in a field, then it probably involves some sleep deprivation. PG wrote an article about the reason startups were suited for youth is that you could push through unreasonable hours to crank a lot of life into fewer days. Sorry for the rant...just wondering if I'm alone in thinking this
- wpietri 9y ago
  Your definition of "works" is suspicious to me. If you're saying that in the short term, short-term thinking works, sure. If you're in college and are doing a bunch of work that doesn't matter to deadlines that are entirely made up, sure, you can get away with it. You claim that doctors do fine without enough sleep, but even doctors don't claim that any more. Doctor friends tell me it's a big focus for reform. [1] And in areas where safety is even more important, like piloting planes, they take mandatory rest even more seriously. Software is mostly not life-critical, but I think it's uniquely bad in this regard. Doctors can bury their mistakes, but version control systems preserve ours forever. It's too easy to be negatively productive in software, and enormously easier if you're not getting enough sleep. [1] http://www.bcmj.org/article/sleep-deprivation-among-physicians http://www.bcmj.org/article/sleep-deprivation-among-physicia...
ssijak 9y ago
Are there any reliable devices that can measure rem phases during sleep reliably and wake you up after 6-8 hours when the rem phase ends? And I'm not talking about sleep apps for phones which work with mics and accelerometers.
dingo_bat 9y ago
Fuck sleep. I'm waiting for the day when I can click a button on my phone to go to sleep instantly and wake up instantly on a timer. No natural feeling of sleepiness. I hate the time lost to sleep. What does it matter if I lose 5 years in my old age? I gain so much time in my younger years. It's like smoking. It's harmful and will kill you in the long term. But why do you care about living to a 100? You will have n other problems.
hellofunk 9y ago
Most of the problems being discussed here in this thread regarding work hours per week, commute times, finding time for leisure and exercise and family time, the time spent dropping off kids at school, etc -- there are mostly unique to America. Americans could really learn a lot about how successful you can be despite spending less time at work, as well as less time fretting about other things, by looking at any of many countries on the continent of Europe, who offer a much better work/life balance but with no sacrifice on work output. Some of the most talented and productive developers I know are in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and have a lifestyle that would be considered impossible by many in the States. The brain needs time to recharge, time away from "work", time to think about work without actually doing work, and the punch that gets packed into a shorter work day can be much greater if the brain is working at optimum capacity, which usually doesn't happen if it is taxed for loads of hours day after day after day. For me personally, my best ideas come when I am away from a computer, and my brain is free to wander. The more time I sit at a computer, ironically the less likely good ideas will come. Most work environments in the States have not learned this yet.
- palpatine_an 9y ago
  Considered impossible due to the different laws set by companies for their employees. European employees get way more vacation time among other things, and American employees get a whole lot of pressure due to the fact that they can be fired anytime with no warning or explanation while places in Europe, for example Denmark, make it much harder to fire employees on a whim, which inherently puts a whole lot pressure on the American employee
  - hellofunk 9y ago
    Everything you said is exactly the point I am making.
tbihl 9y ago
I recognize the thrust of this argument, and anecdotally agree with it from my experience,but it's not practical advice. Work 12 hours, spend at least 30 minutes each way commuting,work out, prepare and eat meals, and you're at pretty nearly 15 hours, without counting preparing for work. Sure,you have time for sleeping 8 hours,but only if you eschew any personal life and find your work sufficiently exciting to not see any need for recreation/fun all week. Dropping to about 6.5 hours of sleep at least doubles time for those things each work day. I've tried maintaining 8 hours of sleep daily in such conditions. What I've found is that I'm productive for two days. By Tuesday or Wednesday night, I'm frustrated and bored, and spend 3 or 4 hours doing something interesting and, bam, week derailed. For me, 6.5 hours is the compromise that works. Plus, I sleep 9 hours on Friday and Saturday nights.
- gejjaxxita 9y ago
  How and why would you work for 12 hours in a day? I don't understand why anyone with choose that life for an extended period of time.
  - tbihl 9y ago
    Great co-workers, somewhat interesting work, insight into a really interesting organization, and a situation where I went in with too little information and now would face substantial costs if I back out rather than persisting for another 3 or 4 years.
    - gejjaxxita 9y ago
      That's fair enough, but I think your personal circumstances are unusual (and unhealthy). For the majority of people sleeping 8 hours is practical advice because they work 8 not 12 hours, leaving them with 4 extra hours, which is enough time to go to the gym, spend with family etc..
garfieldnate 9y ago
This is the first time I've ever read about sleep problems caused by a simple glass of wine before bed. About ten years ago some study came out linking red wine to heart health, and I remember one smug kid at school making fun of the Mormons because the article had just "proven their religion wrong". Meanwhile health organizations were recommending you not start drinking because it's also addictive. I've heard that the drinking culture in the US has changed lately, as it is being seen as less and less healthy (I've been abroad for about 5 years).
ramblerman 9y ago
"Don’t sleep any more than you have to, I usually sleep about four hours per night." -- Think Like a Billionaire, President Trump.

417 points by dalfonso 9y ago

k__ 9y ago

I stopped setting an alarm 90% of my nights and ended up with 10h sleep (2-12) till I wake up by myself.

By use of meditation and yoga I've found the opposite to be true. The system I've used is described somewhat here http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-healthy-tips-to-reduce-your-sleep-quota/ http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-he... Edit: downvotes why?

Mefis 9y ago
I didn't down vote you,but just skimming through your article, #9 seems false. Blood is not affected by magnetic fields, it seems to me. https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-blood-attracted-to-a-magnet-since-it-contains-iron https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-blood-attracted-to-a-magnet-s...
- harryf 9y ago
  I can't attest for that point scientifically or even personally. The argument in #9 as I understand it is, over the course of your lifetime, the cumulative minuscule effect of how you sleep relative to the Earths magnetic field can have a negative effect on your health, increasing the risk of stroke or brain related conditions. To prove or disprove would require long term study (in the order of a human lifetime) with equipment capable of detecting very small changes while eliminating all other effects.
n4r9 9y ago
I wouldn't downvote you (even if I could) for adding to the discussion, but this certainly isn't the sort of content I come to HN to explore. Outlandish claims without anything to back them up.
- harryf 9y ago
  Fair enough. Can only back up with personal experience at this point. "It works for me"
barry-cotter 9y ago
I didn’t downvote you but claiming meditation and yoga substitutes for sleep pattern matches to quack/idiot. Your link has the word guru in it which points the same way. Personally I find it credible because I’ve read studies before suggesting meditation can substitute for sleep 1 for 1 up to some threshold but I’m too lazy to search for them. If you make claims that are as credible as a homeopath or anti-vaxxer cite something that at least looks credible.
- harryf 9y ago
  Fair enough. Was in a hurry. Was obviously a topic that needs more detail. Have also seen those studies (via HN) - in fact they were what originally got me curious about meditation about 5 years ago. Meanwhile the guru in question is one that gets invited to Talk at Google, if that's any measure of credibility - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn8X4FbpTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn8X4FbpTM

pascalxus 9y ago

the article states 7 hours is the minimum, but I seem to need a lot more. they state, if you can sleep after the alarm clock goes off, then you should sleep more. So, what if you get 8.5 hours of sleep but you still could sleep, after the alarm clock goes off? there should be some upper limit, maybe 9?

mikebridgman 9y ago
The article states 7 to 9 hours.
ForRealsies 9y ago
I recommend a 'Sleep' app on your phone. I set it to 7am and it'll wake me up anywhere from 6:30-7, depending on my sleep cycle. Never felt drowsy on 6:30 days.
- givinguflac 9y ago
  This works well for me (I use ‘sleep cycle’) but doesn’t solve my inability to actually get tired and go to bed at night.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Have you tried avoiding screens an hour or two before going to bed? Fill that time with reading or listening to podcasts.
    - pascalxus 9y ago
      podcasts are awesome - we're kinda in a golden age for it.
    - arvinsim 9y ago
      Does the Kindle still count? I heard that it is different from computer screens because the light is backlit, not directly shown into your eyes.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I don't you can generalize things like this. I am sure there are people who can get by on 6 hours or less naturally. But the problem starts when people who need more try force themselves to sleep less. I have done a lot experimentation with this and had to accept that the only sustainable way for me is to sleep around 8 hours every night. It would be cool if I could make do with 4 but it's just not in me.

frozenport 9y ago
The point is that people who claim to function on six are unable to correctly judge their capabilities and are most likely wrong about that claim.
- LogicX 9y ago
  Anecdote is not data, but I have not set an alarm for many years - I sleep 5-6 hours (only 5 since I went vegan) and I wake up on my own, refreshed. Occasionally I’m tired, I take a nap. I don’t do coffee, I have unsweetened tea but don’t go nuts on caffeine, social drinking. I don’t feel any need to ‘sleep in’ on weekends. Yes, I work from home and own my own company, so I have the luxury of taking a nap in the middle of the day. If I were to try to force myself to sleep 8 or 9 hours I feel worse; so I don’t do that anymore.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Good for you. When I was working from home I never used an alarm either and woke up every day around 7:30 no matter when I went to bed.
  - sethrin 9y ago
    I'm in the same boat, working from home to no one else's schedule, but probably with a worse habit of body. I have no idea when I might last have slept for more than seven hours, and I very rarely nap. I'm considering acquiring a 'real job' again, but I'm probably not willing to ever compromise my sleep habits for an employer. I don't think anyone else should either, but I suspect that's not likely to be a popular opinion.

Danihan 9y ago

I'm extremely productive on 4.5 hours, but using a biphasic sleep pattern. 3 hours at night, 1.5 hours in a daytime nap.

pmoriarty 9y ago
How long have you been sleeping like that?
- Danihan 9y ago
  About 1.5 years, give or take. I pretty much require 9 hours on a monophasic schedule to feel as sharp.
  - dapreja 9y ago
    Ok Neo, how about sending us pictures of the matrix source when you get the chance.
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    Yeah, I worry, this only gets rid of tiredeness but not fulfill the whole 8-9 hours of sleep.
    - Danihan 9y ago
      From my experience, I'm better rested now than I was before I went bi-phasic. I personally believe sleep is simply a cleaning cycle for the brain, waiting 16 hours between cleaning cycles may be deleterious.
      - Ygg2 9y ago
        I wasn't speaking about better rested vs less rested. You can totally lose symptoms of tiredness, only to wind up with dementia at later point in life.
        9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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imustbeevil 9y ago

> the Foundation suggests anywhere from six hours to 11 hours of sleep per night for individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 may be suitable, or six hours to 10 hours for those between the ages of 26 and 64. A four to five hour deviation is quite significant. That's a difference of 80% between the most amount of sleep needed and the least. > "I suppose the rule of thumb in adults is about seven to eight hours, but is that based on any really solid science? I would sort of say not," said Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience and head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-different-people-need-different-amounts-of-sleep https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-dif...

deleted 9y ago
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SebNag_ 9y ago
Scientific sources? > Prescribing one amount of sleep for every kind of person seems very obviously wrong. That's, AFAIK, not.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

peterwwillis 9y ago

Sleep need is variable, work is variable, motivation is variable. It's more likely that sleep is a spectrum, hence the 8.34% variance in required minimum sleep for adults, or how general quality of health affects ability to maintain sleep. It's even possible that sleep has nothing to do with our health and productivity other than being an indicator of it, and not necessarily a cause for it. Thanks, pseudo-scientific studies.

ryanbrunner 9y ago
This is all true, but I think it's worthwhile to be very skeptical about your assumption of how much sleep is healthy for you. Everyone in these threads assumes that they are one of the special few who does perfectly fine on 5 hours of sleep.

supernintendo 9y ago

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleeping habits. I'd love to get 7-9 hours of sleep, but I just don't have the time.

lutorm 9y ago
Actually, studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies spent much less than 40h/week "working" and had more leisure time than we do. It's just recent history that's an anomaly...
- ksk 9y ago
  Why is it important that studies have shown a particular result?
  - bluGill 9y ago
    Because only well designed studies can show a truth. It is obviously the case that when you drop a big rock and a little rock at the same time the big rock will hit the ground first. Because we have a study we know this to be false even though it is obvious.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      Well, that particular scenario is false only when there is no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?). More importantly, it wasn't just a "study" that figured out the law of gravitation.
      - dctoedt 9y ago
        > no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?) In 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott repeated the experiment on the lunar surface with a hammer and a feather. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_P... (includes a link to a video clip; jump to about 0:35).

zitterbewegung 9y ago

I feel like when I get 8-9 I am much more productive and have a much better mood. Seven for me is sort of the point where I can go throughout the day but I will be distracted. Six or less is really bad for me. I really notice when I get less sleep I make a bunch more comments on HN / reddit or use Twitter much more.

passivepinetree 9y ago
Likely because you're less focused/more susceptible to the quick reward and novelty that these sites provide. I've noticed when I sleep better I can better focus on long-form entertainment (reading a novel vs. browsing HN, for example).

rightos 9y ago

But do I need to be more productive? It's a tradeoff - I can go home and spend more social time, leisure time and put more personal time into my projects if I sleep less. The 2-3 hours of extra time I get by sleeping like crap allows me to do things I wouldn't otherwise get to do. Productivity couldn't improve these if there's no time left in the day to do them. It costs me at work, I'm sure of it, but it hasn't gotten me fired or even significantly prevented me from doing my job, so why would I change it? There's no need to be obsessed with scraping every last ounce of productivity out of myself at work. I like my job, but feel no obligation for that.

jules 9y ago
If you are X% less productive you will be able to charge X% less for your work, on average, so you would need to work longer hours for the same pay. You might also be shortening your life by not sleeping enough, perhaps by a larger amount than you're gaining by sleeping less. That is clearly the case in the limit of not sleeping at all -- you would shorten your life to a month at best, not to mention that the quality of life would go down.
- rightos 9y ago
  > If you are X% less productive you will be able to charge X% less for your work, on average, so you would need to work longer hours for the same pay. That's making the huge assumption that you're willing to constantly seek your maximum pay and that you get paid solely for your measurable productivity output, which is in my experience very rarely the case. More often than not you get paid based on capabilities and responsibilities, not significantly more or less on your output. It's certainly not a direct X% less productive = X% less pay relationship. I believe it's been shown that seeking new employers is the best way to maximize pay, but that means interviews are often the difference between you and more pay, yet no one can judge future productivity in an interview. > you would shorten your life to a month at best To my knowledge, sleep dep hasn't actually killed people directly like this, they simply start sleeping.
  - jane_pl 9y ago

epc 9y ago

If you feel groggy in the morning or just not well–rested even after 7-8 hours sleep, get your sinuses & lungs checked. Could be sleep apnea, but in my case I felt congested all the time. What I thought was allergies was actually the linings of my sinuses inflamed to the point of closing off air passages. Unclear if the root cause in my case was acid-reflux into the sinus cavities or exposure to dust from ground zero. The resulting surgery kind of sucked (free tip: don't have your sinuses roto-rootered in the winter) but ever since I've been able to sleep a solid 6-7 hours every night. I now wake up rested, don't feel groggy, typically without an alarm.

nikkwong 9y ago
I was just diagnosed with sleep apnea this week after it wreaked havoc on my personal and professional life for the last 6. I couldn't work, couldn't engage in anything. Now I'm pretty much terrified to go to sleep every night as I know I'm probably not going to get any rest and wake up zombified. I heard the surgery was a hit or miss. Would you recommend?
- rhcom2 9y ago
  CPAP is usually the first line for sleep apnea. I've been using one for the past couple of months. They've improved the masks so the really only annoyance is being tethered to the machine when you roll over but it isn't too bad. Another thing I've learned is the CPAP machines now phone home to the insurance company to give them compliance data on how and when you use the machine. Less happy about that.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    You have a free market in healthcare, vote with your wallet.
    - rhcom2 9y ago
      I'd love to but the thing's base price is $800 without hoses or mask. I can't afford that without going through my insurance.

ams6110 9y ago

I feel like my natural body clock is a 28-hour day. If I have no reason to get up I'll sleep for about 10 hours, but then I'm not ready to sleep again for about 18 hours. I'm guessing the 10 hours is just making up for sleep debt and that might taper off if I could sleep as much as I wanted every night. But the realities of life (kids in school, work, kid's activities, etc.) mean that I have to be awake by about 6:45am and being in bed and asleep before 10:00 just doesn't happen very often either.

and0 9y ago
I'm the same way. Back when I used to have summer breaks (highschool / college if I didn't have a part-time gig) my days would start 2 hours later every day. So I'd wake up at 8, then 10, then 12... until I was fully nocturnal. But then 4-5 days later I was back to waking up in the morning.
ashark 9y ago
I used to think that about myself. Now I'm pretty sure it's just the result of having light pollution (lights outside candle temperature and brighter than three or four candles) including glowing screens, electronic device hyperstimulation, and the Internet info treadmill, after 9:00 or so. If I give myself a good long stretch of low light and no electronic toys my "28-hour clock" not-so-mysteriously turns into an ordinary 24-hour one. Being outdoors and active as much as possible during daylight hours also helps (especially in Summer, when dark hours are in short supply).
- randcraw 9y ago
  My natural day lasts considerably more than 24 hours, but only when TV/video is active. Without them, I'm ready for bed by 10 PM. If I still had any working grey cells, I'd run some week-long A/B experiments to verify and assess the impact of each. But I don't think I could live with all that silence, so...

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Why not sleep 8 hours a day if needed (Personally, I'm even more useless on less than 7-8 hrs of sleep)? I am sure you can reinvent the wheel and then some in what's left. People are productive when they are productive, you can come up with the idea to change the world in 60 mins...or never in your lifetime. If Einstein had lived to 150 it's not a given that his contribution to the would would have 2X...

justherefortart 9y ago

I've slept roughly 9 hours every night my entire life. I can't imagine giving up good sleep for anything. Hell, going to bed is usually my favorite thing to do outside of hobbies.

imustbeevil 9y ago

I'm much more interested in why a body needs an amount of sleep, what processes it is conducting, and how you can affect those processes. What happens in the 7th hour that didn't happen in the 6th? If it's a fourth REM cycle, why do we need 4? What does the fourth do that the third didn't? Why do REM cycles take that long? Can you make them take more or less time? Can you determine lack of sleep from a brain scan? Can you tell the difference between a 6th hour brain and a 7th hour brain? Does anything you eat or do during a day affect how long this process takes? What about hydration / nutrition? I'm sure these are all answerable, but I'm not sure most people know the answers, and this article certainly doesn't get us any closer to understanding.

cavanasm 9y ago
This article isn't exactly a presentation of research. Several of those answerable questions will probably be worth Nobel Prizes for the people who can answer them. This is fundamentally a puff piece with a sleep expert promoting his new general audience book on sleep health (Not discounting the tips, or his expertise, but this is obviously not a research paper). Several of the sleep hygiene tips he gives are things that aren't really settled AFAIK in the field, possibly why he even specifically mentions "practicing what he preaches" in that last question. He's preaching at least as much as talking about settled science.
komali2 9y ago
This article doesn't try to, but this comment section would be a fine place for those smarter than me to drop knowledge bombs on us :D .... ... :D
pizza 9y ago
Pure speculation, but suppose that sleep were a cleaning process such that d(Neuron Waste Removed)/dT was a logistic curve.

njarboe 9y ago

The genetic variability of humans seems large enough that simple rules about sleep, like nutrition, are probably wrong for many people. Get more sleep if you are tired all the time? Maybe that would work.

mbertschler 9y ago

Does someone have some scientific source on that topic? I couldn't find something linked in the article.

dreamdu5t 9y ago

Not a single study or piece of research referenced by the article. "Some professor with a book says..." is not very convincing. This is not a news article, and is not journalism. This is an advertisement for a book.

a_lieb 9y ago

One important thing the article doesn't cover: we now have good reason to suspect that chronic sleep deprivation can cause brain damage. Not just a long term decrease in function, but actual cellular damage. In a major triumph of medicine, we now know that brain cells shrink during sleep (about 60% in rats), allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flow about 10 times as fast [1] [2], helping to cycle out built up toxins and waste products and eventually drain them into the bloodstream. It was previously a medical mystery how the brain was able to eliminate toxins without being connected to the lymphatic system (although it's since been shown that the brain is directly connected to the lymphatic system to some degree as well [2]) As far as I know, it's not proven that this contributes to the cognitive effects of chronic sleep deprivation. But it would make an awful lot of sense, and also help explain why sleep debt becomes more difficult to pay off the longer you let it sit around, and why the damage possibly even becomes permanent. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-brains-self-cleaning-system/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-br... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system

wtetzner 9y ago

I'm productive on six hours of sleep in the sense that I get something done. However, I am quite noticeably less productive than if I get more sleep. Even if I don't feel tired, I notice that my thoughts are more muddled and it's hard to concentrate. If I get 6 hours or less of sleep one night, it's usually not a problem. But if the lack of sleep is over multiple days (like it usually is), then it becomes much worse.

bsenftner 9y ago

What is it about those that need less? I personally have been sleeping 5-6 hours per night for decades. In my mid-30's I stopped my youthful partying and found I did not need to sleep as much. Now, at 52, more than 6 hours feel like too much and I'm groggy.

bmelton 9y ago
I'm in the same boat as you. You might Google for DEC2, and maybe there's even a test for it. I'm convinced I have it, and even did a 23andMe thinking they might test for it, but alas, they don't. Despite knowing that I just don't need a lot in the way of sleep, it seems that every time I make that claim, it's met with incredulity, but having worked a job for 6 years in a different time zone, and with a loose schedule, whenever I just went to bed when I got tired, and woke up when I woke up, I found that the median sleep length was in the 5-5.5 hour range.
evanwise 9y ago
Same. 5 to 6 hours and I feel fine, unless I'm ill or already sleep deprived. I can function on 3-4 hours per night for extended periods of time before I start to notice serious deterioration in mental faculties. I believe it's genetic. Some studies have tentatively tied naturally short sleep cycles to a gene variant (http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-by-category/insomnias/short-sleeper http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-by-category/in...). Also, my father sleeps for about the same amount of time as well.

jason_slack 9y ago

This makes me feel weird knowing that I practice a polyphasic sleep pattern for such a long time now.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

I think the headline is misleading. Let's say I stay up late to do X, Y and/or Z. These things to mean have meaning. In doing them I feel a sense of accomplishment. I've been productive. Now I show up to work the next day. Certainly less sleep has some effect on me. But that doesn't devalue the increased productivity from the previous evening. The brain is a limited resource. There might be occasional short term hacks/cheats. But on average you'll have X gallons in the mental tank. This is true. If you spend that at home then yes you will be "less productive" at work.

conistonwater 9y ago

There is a very good talk on youtube by William Dement from Stanford that is longer-form than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8

sandworm101 9y ago

>> If you were not to set an alarm clock, would you sleep past it? If the answer is yes, then there is clearly more sleep that is needed. Totally wrong. I just finished 4 months of military training. Sleep deprivation was part of the training. We were constantly sleep deprived. It impacted our performance, that was the point. That said, I'm one of those people who always seems to get up 2 minutes before the alarm. Even in my sleep-deprived state, less than four hours a night for weeks, I still woke up before my alarm.

Rasco 9y ago
Your point, although interesting, does not invalidate the quote. Let A be « you would sleep past the alarm clock without it » and B « you are sleep-deprived » They say A → B. You say false since I got B and not(A). A → B does not imply B → A which would be proved false by your case.

refurb 9y ago

Maybe I'm weird, but I've never deluded myself about the impact of a lack of sleep. My entire life I've strived to get 7.5 to 8 hours a night. I'm not that successful lately, but I make it a priority. What I don't get are people that brag about not getting much sleep. It's clearly unhealthy. Would you brag about your poor eating habits? Or not following a medication regimen? I know the science is still early, but I have no doubt that poor sleep has a significant, long-term, permanent impact on health.

swah 9y ago

Sometimes I can sleep over 6 hours, but then I wake up with back pain...

undersuit 9y ago
Sleep on your back on the floor, beds are an new invention and a bad one can be painful. So before you go out and buy a new mattress experiment with your sleep. Hammocks are also said to be a good alternative.

ohdrat 9y ago

Have gotten 6 for decades, but I used to swim/run/yoga. Now I don't do anything because there's no time and am still productive, but need lots of caffeine and morale boosters, like I traded a couple pairs loafer mesh shoes I didn't like for a high end pair of proper fitting ASIC running shoes at Nordstrom's today. In fact I lost a couple hours sleep just thinking about trading those shoes today...

lanius 9y ago

And yet South Korean students get less than 6 hours of sleep a night. Insane how society just accepts that.

martin1975 9y ago

multiple shrinks, doctors, psychiatrists, sleep therapists have told me a 7 hour minimum is required... I'm in my 40's.

sabujp 9y ago

so basically having kids makes you stupid, more prone to heart attack, etc etc

ramirez60 9y ago

I can't be alone in being exhausted at these studies. Doctors and Lawyers have spent the better part of the last century working on little to no sleep. Academics too. As an engineer, I would regularly work through little sleep because the process of loading a large project into my head to work on it would take more time than the gains from being more well rested. I'm older now, and no longer work as an engineer. I value my sleep and appreciate how much more I can task-switch on a good nights rest, but the idea that I'm not being productive when I'm grinding through work that has to get done and I'm tired seems an overwritten idea. I'm not arguing against rest and recharging and clearing your mind. I just don't see what these articles are trying to prove. When I was in college I had several stints of no sleep days to finish projects. Even into my early engineering career, I once billed 40 hours straight. Was I as "productive" per minute for that entire time as if I had slept through 5 nights? No. Would the work have gotten done faster than those 40 hours if I had slept for 8 hours in the middle a few times? No. I had a deadline, and there was nothing getting around the work needing to be done. The argument seems to be against a constant sprinting mode, which I don't think any company employs. Humans burn out after continuous work for weeks, sometimes months. But a week or 3 of little to no sleep to get through everything you need to? It's worked for a long time. Arguably building up muscle memory while forcing rote things to be learned while on little sleep works. What are we trying to prove by this? That "the man" is out to abuse workers? Of course he is. But did anyone make partner at a law firm by claiming he's going to more productive by working less? If you're goal is work life balance, go ahead. But if you're goal is to excel in a field, then it probably involves some sleep deprivation. PG wrote an article about the reason startups were suited for youth is that you could push through unreasonable hours to crank a lot of life into fewer days. Sorry for the rant...just wondering if I'm alone in thinking this

wpietri 9y ago
Your definition of "works" is suspicious to me. If you're saying that in the short term, short-term thinking works, sure. If you're in college and are doing a bunch of work that doesn't matter to deadlines that are entirely made up, sure, you can get away with it. You claim that doctors do fine without enough sleep, but even doctors don't claim that any more. Doctor friends tell me it's a big focus for reform. [1] And in areas where safety is even more important, like piloting planes, they take mandatory rest even more seriously. Software is mostly not life-critical, but I think it's uniquely bad in this regard. Doctors can bury their mistakes, but version control systems preserve ours forever. It's too easy to be negatively productive in software, and enormously easier if you're not getting enough sleep. [1] http://www.bcmj.org/article/sleep-deprivation-among-physicians http://www.bcmj.org/article/sleep-deprivation-among-physicia...

ssijak 9y ago

Are there any reliable devices that can measure rem phases during sleep reliably and wake you up after 6-8 hours when the rem phase ends? And I'm not talking about sleep apps for phones which work with mics and accelerometers.

dingo_bat 9y ago

Fuck sleep. I'm waiting for the day when I can click a button on my phone to go to sleep instantly and wake up instantly on a timer. No natural feeling of sleepiness. I hate the time lost to sleep. What does it matter if I lose 5 years in my old age? I gain so much time in my younger years. It's like smoking. It's harmful and will kill you in the long term. But why do you care about living to a 100? You will have n other problems.

hellofunk 9y ago

Most of the problems being discussed here in this thread regarding work hours per week, commute times, finding time for leisure and exercise and family time, the time spent dropping off kids at school, etc -- there are mostly unique to America. Americans could really learn a lot about how successful you can be despite spending less time at work, as well as less time fretting about other things, by looking at any of many countries on the continent of Europe, who offer a much better work/life balance but with no sacrifice on work output. Some of the most talented and productive developers I know are in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and have a lifestyle that would be considered impossible by many in the States. The brain needs time to recharge, time away from "work", time to think about work without actually doing work, and the punch that gets packed into a shorter work day can be much greater if the brain is working at optimum capacity, which usually doesn't happen if it is taxed for loads of hours day after day after day. For me personally, my best ideas come when I am away from a computer, and my brain is free to wander. The more time I sit at a computer, ironically the less likely good ideas will come. Most work environments in the States have not learned this yet.

palpatine_an 9y ago
Considered impossible due to the different laws set by companies for their employees. European employees get way more vacation time among other things, and American employees get a whole lot of pressure due to the fact that they can be fired anytime with no warning or explanation while places in Europe, for example Denmark, make it much harder to fire employees on a whim, which inherently puts a whole lot pressure on the American employee
- hellofunk 9y ago
  Everything you said is exactly the point I am making.

tbihl 9y ago

I recognize the thrust of this argument, and anecdotally agree with it from my experience,but it's not practical advice. Work 12 hours, spend at least 30 minutes each way commuting,work out, prepare and eat meals, and you're at pretty nearly 15 hours, without counting preparing for work. Sure,you have time for sleeping 8 hours,but only if you eschew any personal life and find your work sufficiently exciting to not see any need for recreation/fun all week. Dropping to about 6.5 hours of sleep at least doubles time for those things each work day. I've tried maintaining 8 hours of sleep daily in such conditions. What I've found is that I'm productive for two days. By Tuesday or Wednesday night, I'm frustrated and bored, and spend 3 or 4 hours doing something interesting and, bam, week derailed. For me, 6.5 hours is the compromise that works. Plus, I sleep 9 hours on Friday and Saturday nights.

gejjaxxita 9y ago
How and why would you work for 12 hours in a day? I don't understand why anyone with choose that life for an extended period of time.
- tbihl 9y ago
  Great co-workers, somewhat interesting work, insight into a really interesting organization, and a situation where I went in with too little information and now would face substantial costs if I back out rather than persisting for another 3 or 4 years.
  - gejjaxxita 9y ago
    That's fair enough, but I think your personal circumstances are unusual (and unhealthy). For the majority of people sleeping 8 hours is practical advice because they work 8 not 12 hours, leaving them with 4 extra hours, which is enough time to go to the gym, spend with family etc..

garfieldnate 9y ago

This is the first time I've ever read about sleep problems caused by a simple glass of wine before bed. About ten years ago some study came out linking red wine to heart health, and I remember one smug kid at school making fun of the Mormons because the article had just "proven their religion wrong". Meanwhile health organizations were recommending you not start drinking because it's also addictive. I've heard that the drinking culture in the US has changed lately, as it is being seen as less and less healthy (I've been abroad for about 5 years).

ramblerman 9y ago

"Don’t sleep any more than you have to, I usually sleep about four hours per night." -- Think Like a Billionaire, President Trump.