5 ms·

Sleep hacks

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
This submission - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953615 - is of a document about getting better sleep, and taking control of your sleeping patterns. It's also hosted by scribd. In the discussion a link was provided to a non-scribd version, so here it is. It's a 1.8MB ZIP of a PDF.
cturner 16y ago
Hurrah! Thank you fellow scribd-loather. I flagged the other article out of disgust but was annoyed as the topic interests me.
- mambodog 16y ago
  I wouldn't mind just going to the Scribd page and clicking the green 'download' button if they would just let me have the file without extracting my personal details (facebook connect).
  - seancron 16y ago
    That's why I use Bugmenot: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/scribd.com http://www.bugmenot.com/view/scribd.com
stefanve 16y ago
Thank you :)
mise 16y ago
I feel sorry for http://www.sleepwarrior.com/ http://www.sleepwarrior.com/ that their site is in "maintenance mode".
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Direct link to a PDF: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Ge...
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  I see the title has now been re-written. It used to be more descriptive, and point out that this was a non-scribd link. Now it's been trimmed simply to say it's about sleep hack, and not mentioning the non-scribd aspect. I find that leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth. I wish it hadn't been done, but I guess I can understand why.
fragmede 16y ago
Surely I'm not the only person who thinks a PDF inside a ZIP is worse than Scribd.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  I'm sorry, clearly I should've done even more work for you so you wouldn't have to do anything. Now I have, or at least, I spent two minutes looking thorugh the existing thread to find the link already there. So here, just for you, a direct link to a PDF that you can view online and without any extra work: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Ge...
  - henryci 16y ago
    But now I have to go online to download the bits. And how am I going to read it in bed? If you'd be less self-serving and think about the rest of us for a change you and print the article out that would be appreciated. It's only 50 page but it would probably be better to get it bound as well. I expect this by end of day, please.
  - duck 16y ago
    I have to ask though... why submit this again to HN when all of these other download methods were linked on the other thread already? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953637 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953637 These two threads basically show what I have always said... PDFs are wrong for the web (and any 'tool' that displays them).
    - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
      In short, because the other submission has a link to the scribd site, and the direct links were buried. But submitting this separately I gave people a chance to decide whether they want to access the direct version(s), or the scribd one. Ideally a site that eventually replaces HN, or an update to HN, will have a single location where similar submissions can congregate, and then we get a single discussion thread. In this case we could then have put the direct links as alternative sources, and retained a single discussion location. But we don't have that, so I provided an alternative source that was close to the surface, instead of buried in a thread.
astroguy 16y ago
Thank you. I have a feeling that my brain works best during nights, but I have to start tuning to overcome that feeling.
- troutwine 16y ago
  It's worth noting that some humans are shifted into the evening. Morning-persons and night-owls seem to have held different advantages to our species once we domesticated dogs. Morning folks catch the first rays of light for the day's labor, night folks tend the watch fires and keep intruders away while the bulk of the humans sleep.
  - brass_cannon 16y ago
    That's an interesting idea. Is there any additional reading related to this?
    - troutwine 16y ago
      Of course. The following Wikipedia article has several references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype It is also worthwhile to do a Google Scholar search with the query "evolution eveningness".
goldenthunder 16y ago
modafinil = sleep hax.
ashconnor 16y ago
Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't "hack" your sleep. The human body isn't a computer or a program and shouldn't be treated as such.
- TallGuyShort 16y ago
  I disagree - the more we understand the underlying mechanisms of our body, the better we can get it to perform. It's a bit like saying changing your diet because you know what's bad for you is messing with nature.
  - ashconnor 16y ago
    That's why I'll be taking advice from my doctor and not an ebook.
    - jh3 16y ago
      It's not telling you to take all sorts of weird drugs in order to sleep, it's basically outlining things we already know. Go to sleep early, eat right, don't eat weird shit at night, and you'll feel better. Witchcraft, I say.
    - tree_of_item 16y ago
      Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook? And what makes your doctor the authority on sleep? They inevitably get their information from scientific studies not conducted by themselves, and the author of an ebook can do the exact same thing. There's no reason to disparage the ebook just because it doesn't look like the conventional form of authority.
      - ashconnor 16y ago
        >Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook? Then it should cite the sources.
david_shaw 16y ago
Not trying to give a personal plug (well, maybe a little bit), but I wrote a bed time calculator that might count as a pretty cool 'sleep hack'. The idea is that it counts backwards in sleep cycles from the time your alarm has to go off so that you wake up during a light phase of sleep. Waking up in light sleep (vs deep sleep) will let you wake up feeling more awake, alert and refreshed. If you're interested, the URL is http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions about the page, so if you have any feel free to let me know!
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  It assumes everyone has a sleep cycle of 90 minutes, but I believe sleep cycles get shorter through the night.
  - david_shaw 16y ago
    I've heard interesting comments from both sides of this issue. Some people say that sleep cycles get longer as the night goes on, while others say that they get gradually shorter. Although I was originally going to try to compensate for this variation, I instead decided to go with the average sleep cycle times instead. There is always going to be some variance in the length of cycles (usually between about 75 minutes and about 110 minutes), but the average is pretty well documented to be about an hour and a half. Although it's definitely true that some people will have drastically differently timed sleep cycles, this is usually due to some other neurological condition. My theory is that short of that, the law of averages will help me out :)
    - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
      Well, suppose I need to get up at 07:30. It advises me to go to sleep at 22:30, which is 9 hours, or 6 cycles. If I'm out by just 10 minutes, that's an hour. So perhaps I should go to sleep at 21:30. Or at 23:30. There's a big difference. I do love the idea - the challenge it trying to work out whether I'm average. 8-)
- jonhendry 16y ago

This submission - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953615 - is of a document about getting better sleep, and taking control of your sleeping patterns. It's also hosted by scribd. In the discussion a link was provided to a non-scribd version, so here it is. It's a 1.8MB ZIP of a PDF.

cturner 16y ago

Hurrah! Thank you fellow scribd-loather. I flagged the other article out of disgust but was annoyed as the topic interests me.

mambodog 16y ago
I wouldn't mind just going to the Scribd page and clicking the green 'download' button if they would just let me have the file without extracting my personal details (facebook connect).
- seancron 16y ago
  That's why I use Bugmenot: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/scribd.com http://www.bugmenot.com/view/scribd.com

stefanve 16y ago

Thank you :)

mise 16y ago

I feel sorry for http://www.sleepwarrior.com/ http://www.sleepwarrior.com/ that their site is in "maintenance mode".

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Direct link to a PDF: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Ge...

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I see the title has now been re-written. It used to be more descriptive, and point out that this was a non-scribd link. Now it's been trimmed simply to say it's about sleep hack, and not mentioning the non-scribd aspect. I find that leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth. I wish it hadn't been done, but I guess I can understand why.

fragmede 16y ago

Surely I'm not the only person who thinks a PDF inside a ZIP is worse than Scribd.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I'm sorry, clearly I should've done even more work for you so you wouldn't have to do anything. Now I have, or at least, I spent two minutes looking thorugh the existing thread to find the link already there. So here, just for you, a direct link to a PDF that you can view online and without any extra work: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578454/3932344-40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Ge...
- henryci 16y ago
  But now I have to go online to download the bits. And how am I going to read it in bed? If you'd be less self-serving and think about the rest of us for a change you and print the article out that would be appreciated. It's only 50 page but it would probably be better to get it bound as well. I expect this by end of day, please.
- duck 16y ago
  I have to ask though... why submit this again to HN when all of these other download methods were linked on the other thread already? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953637 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953637 These two threads basically show what I have always said... PDFs are wrong for the web (and any 'tool' that displays them).
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    In short, because the other submission has a link to the scribd site, and the direct links were buried. But submitting this separately I gave people a chance to decide whether they want to access the direct version(s), or the scribd one. Ideally a site that eventually replaces HN, or an update to HN, will have a single location where similar submissions can congregate, and then we get a single discussion thread. In this case we could then have put the direct links as alternative sources, and retained a single discussion location. But we don't have that, so I provided an alternative source that was close to the surface, instead of buried in a thread.

astroguy 16y ago

Thank you. I have a feeling that my brain works best during nights, but I have to start tuning to overcome that feeling.

troutwine 16y ago
It's worth noting that some humans are shifted into the evening. Morning-persons and night-owls seem to have held different advantages to our species once we domesticated dogs. Morning folks catch the first rays of light for the day's labor, night folks tend the watch fires and keep intruders away while the bulk of the humans sleep.
- brass_cannon 16y ago
  That's an interesting idea. Is there any additional reading related to this?
  - troutwine 16y ago
    Of course. The following Wikipedia article has several references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype It is also worthwhile to do a Google Scholar search with the query "evolution eveningness".

goldenthunder 16y ago

modafinil = sleep hax.

ashconnor 16y ago

Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't "hack" your sleep. The human body isn't a computer or a program and shouldn't be treated as such.

TallGuyShort 16y ago
I disagree - the more we understand the underlying mechanisms of our body, the better we can get it to perform. It's a bit like saying changing your diet because you know what's bad for you is messing with nature.
- ashconnor 16y ago
  That's why I'll be taking advice from my doctor and not an ebook.
  - jh3 16y ago
    It's not telling you to take all sorts of weird drugs in order to sleep, it's basically outlining things we already know. Go to sleep early, eat right, don't eat weird shit at night, and you'll feel better. Witchcraft, I say.
  - tree_of_item 16y ago
    Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook? And what makes your doctor the authority on sleep? They inevitably get their information from scientific studies not conducted by themselves, and the author of an ebook can do the exact same thing. There's no reason to disparage the ebook just because it doesn't look like the conventional form of authority.
    - ashconnor 16y ago
      >Suppose the author aggregated information from many doctors and wrote it down an ebook? Then it should cite the sources.

david_shaw 16y ago

Not trying to give a personal plug (well, maybe a little bit), but I wrote a bed time calculator that might count as a pretty cool 'sleep hack'. The idea is that it counts backwards in sleep cycles from the time your alarm has to go off so that you wake up during a light phase of sleep. Waking up in light sleep (vs deep sleep) will let you wake up feeling more awake, alert and refreshed. If you're interested, the URL is http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions about the page, so if you have any feel free to let me know!

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
It assumes everyone has a sleep cycle of 90 minutes, but I believe sleep cycles get shorter through the night.
- david_shaw 16y ago
  I've heard interesting comments from both sides of this issue. Some people say that sleep cycles get longer as the night goes on, while others say that they get gradually shorter. Although I was originally going to try to compensate for this variation, I instead decided to go with the average sleep cycle times instead. There is always going to be some variance in the length of cycles (usually between about 75 minutes and about 110 minutes), but the average is pretty well documented to be about an hour and a half. Although it's definitely true that some people will have drastically differently timed sleep cycles, this is usually due to some other neurological condition. My theory is that short of that, the law of averages will help me out :)
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    Well, suppose I need to get up at 07:30. It advises me to go to sleep at 22:30, which is 9 hours, or 6 cycles. If I'm out by just 10 minutes, that's an hour. So perhaps I should go to sleep at 21:30. Or at 23:30. There's a big difference. I do love the idea - the challenge it trying to work out whether I'm average. 8-)
jonhendry 16y ago