22 ms·

Sleep is more important than food

437 points by panarky 16y ago

brd 16y ago
"Sleep is important" has been a recurring theme for the last couple of years but I am one of the few that don't buy into it at all. Maybe I fall into the 2.5% but if I sleep 8+ hours I feel overslept and groggy. I function moderately to exceptionally well on 6 hours of sleep and often times end up getting more like 3-5 hours of sleep. I've read articles about high functioning executives that barely sleep at all and seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan along with all the standard sleep is so important articles. I think its safe to say the jury is still out on this subject and keep hoping it doesn't continue to over saturate the news/science pipeline for much longer. Until there is a definitive answer you'll continue hearing me say "sleep is overrated".
- nopassrecover 16y ago
  I agree for the most part. However, try going for a regular run (say 5km) once per week, same day, and track your times. Let's say you hit about 30 minutes first time, and get it down to around 20 mins over a couple of weeks. Now try greater sleep deprivation than normal one week and watch your time plummet.
  - dgallagher 16y ago
    It's well known that sleep is an absolute requirement for athletes. If you don't get an optimal amount, performance will suffer: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa062800a.htm http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa062800a....
    - nopassrecover 16y ago
      If it affects peak physical performance, it seems reasonable to suspect it affects peak mental performance (as studies seem to suggest). High functioning executives might get by on little sleep, but would they perform better on more sleep? Are hours clocked more important than output at the executive level?
      - haploid 16y ago
        No, it doesn't seem reasonable at all. Athletic activity causes actual physical microdamage that takes rest time, nutrition, and hormones to repair. The elevated secretion of human growth hormone during REM sleep is a significant reason why athletes perform better on more sleep. No such analogue exists for the human brain. Mental activities, at worst, deplete neurotransmitter levels. I have seen no evidence to suggest that massive dosages of sleep do a better job of restoring these levels than minimally adequate amounts.
        michaeldhopkins 16y ago
        For mental work, sleep is not replenishment, it's prep work. Your brain is thinking problems while you sleep.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Not only that, sleep also appears to be when your brain reinforces what you've learned... over and over again.
        jules 16y ago
        I thought it was well known that sleep plays a very important role in learning?
        nopassrecover 16y ago
        Yet people perform worse mentally without sleep - why would that be if sleep was not vital to mental performance? Have you never needed a nap or coffee to refresh your mind? Do you deny a physical influence on mental faculties?
        jacques_chester 16y ago
        Training involves neural adaptation, a large part of which occurs while sleeping. The systems of the body are not neatly partitioned into modules.
  - brd 16y ago
    Considering I used to run Xcountry and have been known to go out for 8+ mile runs in the middle of the night, I'd say for the most part my sleeping habits do not impact how I feel while running. In fact, I'd actually say more exercise is more important than more sleep as I feel much better in general when I am exercising/running regularly, regardless of my sleeping habits. I will absolutely concede that there is a threshold where sleep deprivation will negatively impact my (or anyone's) ability to perform, its just a question of what that threshold actually is.
  - dean 16y ago
    I find the same sort of result with coding on little sleep. While it feels like I'm "high functioning" while coding at 4:00AM, a code review in the light of day after a good night's sleep often reveals that I wasn't.
    - danielsoneg 16y ago
      I've begun to suspect this is because we don't notice all the little issues we'd notice if we were more awake - at 4AM, the code is Flying, because I'm not stopping to realize how crappy the code is.
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        I've had similar experiences. If I am very tired I don't get "coder's block", but the code is often rubbish.
- winestock 16y ago
  Most of what you site is anecdotal evidence. Most likely, you and those executives fall into that 2.5% cohort.
- Johngibb 16y ago
  "sleep is important" is a lot different than "8+ hours of sleep is important." I'd agree with the former, but agree that the latter is dependent on the individual. Anecdotally, I definitely agree that oversleeping makes meore groggy.
- haploid 16y ago
  I am in absolute agreement with this. I find that if I sleep more than 6 hours a night, I am actually more tired the following day. Normally, I get 5 hours per night and I rarely experience low levels of functioning or excessive fatigue. And as other have pointed out, the methodology of the cited experiment in the article is highly suspect. Any normal human being, locked in a room with no stimuli, is likely to sleep as much as possible to pass the time.
  - jules 16y ago
    At a time when I was sleep deprived I felt completely OK. When I caught up on the sleep I felt worse. I think it's because sleep deprivation also deprives you of the ability to notice the negative effects well enough. That's probably not what's happening with you if you naturally sleep 5 hours per night without an alarm though. If you are using an alarm, you should try sleeping as long as your body feels like for two weeks. Don't block sunlight from your windows, let the sun make sure you wake up if your body thinks you've slept enough. If your body thinks you are still not rested, it will keep you asleep even in sunlight.
- flatline 16y ago
  I need 8 and often more like 9 or 10 hours of solid sleep each night. If I'm well-rested, one night of 6 or 7 hours doesn't affect me, but it can't happen repeatedly. We may both just be outliers.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > I've ... seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan The surveys I can find associate "normal" amounts of sleep with better lifespan, and both abnormally high and abnormally low levels of sleep (<5 or 6 and >9 or 10 hours, depending on the study) with various negative outcomes. E.g. this meta-analysis pools prospective studies looking at heart attack and stroke rates: http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/03/eurheartj.ehr007 http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/03...
  - brd 16y ago
    Depending on where you look the golden rule for longevity seems to be 6-7 hours of sleep. The interesting thing about 7 being the more common number is that 7 doesn't fit into the commonly held belief that sleeping in sync with 90 minute REM cycles is more healthy/effective. Example of study saying 6-7 hours: http://www.worldhealth.net/news/six_to_seven_hours_sleep_best_for_a_long/ http://www.worldhealth.net/news/six_to_seven_hours_sleep_bes...
- dlo 16y ago
  > ... seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan... Sleeping less than your own individual sleep need probably does not improve life span. The participants in the studies you're referring to who slept vastly more than others were those with sleeping disorders, some with extremely bad sleep apnea. They felt the need to sleep more because the quality of their sleep was so poor. But of course, having a lot of poor-quality sleep is not equivalent to having fewer hours of good-quality sleep. The contribution I would like to make to this discussion is that each person's sleep need is individual.
winestock 16y ago
Schools such as Caltech and MIT have rigorous curricula that proverbially requires constant study every day of the week just to stay in the middle of the pack. Naturally, most students cut back on sleep. Proponents of this approach are aware of this, even boast about it, saying that this is the best way to learn the material. On the other hand, numerous studies -- including the link at the top of this page -- conclude that this is the worst way to get anything done. They can't both be right.
- kscaldef 16y ago
  No, those schools have cultures that promote such behavior. I was a grad student and TA at Caltech and observed that the undergrads had horrible time management skills. Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm. (I'm not specifically picking on Caltech undergrads, BTW. I'm fairly sure this is typical at most schools.)
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    "Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm." This may be true, but there are also plenty of students who work from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed and still don't have enough time to get all of their assignments done. The problem is that functionally there isn't really any difference between having a 3.5 GPA and a 2.0 GPA, so at some point most people figure out that what they're being asked to do is impossible so they might as well just do their own thing.
    - dkarl 16y ago
      Perhaps they should have gone somewhere else where they had time to sleep and think instead of just studying all the time. I know that where I work, the folks who are willing to grind the hardest on assigned work are rarely the ones you turn to for difficult and responsible work. The very best people are the ones who work extremely hard at self-directed work and sometimes push back against assigned work, but they are very, very rare, much rarer than people who are willing to grind day and night on whatever you assign them. The best person for difficult assignments is usually someone who refuses to overwork himself or herself.
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Hey! Put me in a locked room with no windows and no clocks, and I'll sleep 7 hours too - out of boredom.
- deleted 16y ago
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nopassrecover 16y ago
"So how much sleep do you need? When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours." The broken link there is meant to point to (http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-m...) and I can't spot where it mentions this study. In any case, you put me in a room with no clock or windows (and presumably no serious stimuli as it's likely to influence the results) and I can bet you I'll sleep twice as much - out of pure boredom.
- eru 16y ago
  I read about some such experiments. Some people actually preferred it, and used the distraction free environment to finish their PhD theses.
- dazmax 16y ago
  I think the theory is that once you've fully slept off your sleep debt (which I've heard can be up to 40 hours) you are no longer able to sleep much more than your natural sleep requirement, bored or not.
  - eru 16y ago
    Interesting. I can sleep for 12 hours several nights in a row.
  - hucker 16y ago
    Very interesting, do you have any sources on this? If I forget to set my alarm I can easily sleep for 14-16 hours before I wake, any day of the week. If one possible solution to this is to go on a total sleeping binge for a week or so I'd be thrilled!
giu 16y ago
A tool I've been using for the past days: http://sleepyti.me/ http://sleepyti.me/ I'm currently testing it. The last two days I went to bed at a time which the tool suggested; getting up wasn't much of an issue, and I felt some improvements, but it's definitely too early to say that it works for me.
- adamzap 16y ago
  sleep_times = [wake_time - 1.5 * x for x in range(3, 7)][::-1] Is that really all that's happening here?
  - kvdr 16y ago
    Yep. Basically one sleep cycle is 90mins. So it just gives you 3-4 times based on minimum 2 cycles. Nothing fancy.
- goombastic 16y ago
  Nice!! :)
- bvi 16y ago
  Placebo effect, more than anything else.
- a-priori 16y ago
  Placebo effect. Sleep doesn't work in neat 90 minute cycles. They're really longer in the early part of the night, and get faster and more biased towards REM in the later part of the night. The details are very individual and also vary night to night, so you can't predict with any accuracy at the start of the night what stage you'll be in at 7:00:00AM the next morning. (Anecdote: A friend of mine used to swear by a theory, mostly as a joke, that the recipe for good night's sleep was sleeping an odd number of hours. One day he came all happy and said, "Thank God 15 is an odd number!")
- john2x 16y ago
  I don't get this. Why are there 4 different suggested times?
kgtm 16y ago
I wish there was a way for me to sleep less than 9 hours. At least now i have a great excuse for people calling me lazy. I am special!
- faragon 16y ago
  Try with daily jogging (30-40 minutes/day). I bet you'll feel better and will have enough sleeping 7.5-8h.
briandoll 16y ago
If you're interested in a more anthropological perspective on sleep and its importance, check out "Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival" (http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/0671038680 http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/067...)
ylem 16y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I'm someone who sleeps on average 6 hours/night. When I have experiments, then I sometimes drop down to 4 hrs/night. I've found that I can manage with 4 hrs/night for about a week (it has gotten a bit harder with age)--BUT I know that I'm not as effective or creative when dealing with such little amounts of sleep. I also know that I'm more prone to make errors and try to develop habits so that I do the "right thing (TM)" when I'm too tired to think (it's like martial arts where you train reflexes...). I also try to know when to throw in the towel and just go home because if I stay I'm likely enough to make a mistake that will cost me more time in the end, or I need sleep so that I can think about something. However, in normal running mode, 6 hrs (as long as I'm getting exercise) feels normal to me and it's what I sleep even without an alarm unless I'm recovering from severe sleep deprivation (I don't drink coffee and generally just drink tea when I really need to stay awake...). What are other people's experiences? Somehow the dark room scenario in the article seems unrealistic. I do agree that for creative work that more sleep (in my case 6 hr/night) seems necessary--but if I find myself sleeping longer (like say 9 hrs), then I just end up feeling more tired...
- adriand 16y ago
  I'm with you on this. Like most people, I would like to consistently get 7-8 hours of sleep a night, but I've got two young children, a packed work schedule, and volunteer commitments. These days I'm operating on about 5 hours of sleep per night and I'm functioning fine. If I wasn't up at 5:00 am to get a couple of hours of work in before my kids are up at 7, I'd be falling behind right now. I'm probably making more errors than I would normally but they're mainly minor. By about 8:00 pm I get pretty fatigued and I may nap for 10 minutes at this time, to recharge for the evening. The work I am doing is challenging but for the moment doesn't require a lot of creativity, so the tradeoff between the sheer amount of work I can get done versus the decrease in errors is worth it to me at the moment. I do exercise pretty consistently however (approx. 4 times/week for 30 to 45 minutes) and I find this invaluable in terms of keeping me less stressed and more productive.
Splatchar 16y ago
Sleep may be more important than food but, interestingly, there seems to be a relationship between sleep and food. When fasting, less sleep is required. However, when sleep is curtailed, there is a greater desire for food.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  I always figured if you're awake instead of asleep, you're actually consuming more calories and thus need more food.
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jonmc12 16y ago
I'm surprised this article is at the top of HN. 1) It is not the announcement of a research study, rather it is just referencing previous hbr blogs and sleepfoundation.org's general guidelines for sleep. 2) It offers no unique advice. 3) The title is basic linkbait (ie, its not really about food vs sleep). Why the upvotes? is it because everyone is tired?
- BoppreH 16y ago
  It may not be new or unique, but I didn't know sleep was that important. And no, I'm not tired.
- deleted 16y ago
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- jey 16y ago
  The research is voluminous and has been around for a long time. Articles like this make the results easy for us normals to digest. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+deprivation&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+deprivation&hl...
  - Natsu 16y ago
    In experiments, rats have actually been killed by lack of sleep. Mind you, it took about a month as I recall, but it's still a bit scary.
  - jonmc12 16y ago
    I think this is what surprises me - this is hacker news, not normals news. How interesting is a safe interpretation of the research that conforms to what I was taught in 2nd grade? Its like someone posted an article extolling the virtues of the food pyramid or something. Even my doctor has a more liberal interpretation of the research than this particular author (and he is probably more qualified to make this interpretation). In the past I've experimented with quantities of sleep, polyphasic sleep, measuring sleep quality, light / sound in the room, sleep supplements, etc, etc. Why? because sleep takes up 25-30% of my life. Its a no brainer activity for me to try to hack and optimize. Further, given sleep is such a big part of all of our lives, I'm surprised more people on this site do not have a similar mindset about experimenting and tweaking their sleep patterns. Show me some articles with new research, personal experiments, or useful tips that can allow me to hack my sleep - these kind of interpretations are much more useful to digest.
mrspandex 16y ago
People say that you'll die... faster than without water but we know it's just a lie Scare your son, scare your daughter
amitraman1 16y ago
Sleep rocks! I am in the 2.5% that sleep 8 hours or more. I am much more productive during the day as a result. I am alert, my brain spins faster and I can take on more challenges. My friend is a superstar scientist/M.D. and he sleeps 9 or more hours a day. The "executives" who sleep < 7 hours need to fine a hour more. If I was a board member, I'd insist my C-level team sleep 8 hours!
orijing 16y ago
Something I observed from reading the comments here: A lot of us can function on much fewer hours of sleep regularly and don't believe it adversely affects our performance (It does affect mine though). Does anyone think there may be some selection going on here? What I mean is, perhaps it's true that HN's distribution is more skewed toward the side of people who need less sleep (and hence has more productive hours in the day) and are willing to sleep less in order to get things done. Maybe we don't really represent the general population. Just a warning in case anyone takes our testimonials too seriously.
- KC8ZKF 16y ago
  Everybody thinks they are above average. "I can exceed the speed limits, because I am an excellent driver." "I need less sleep than the average person."
- eavc 16y ago
  Can function or can function optimally? Some research shows that mood is impacted more drastically than function. Since burnout and perseverance are such key topics (and emotionally dependent ones), maybe heroic sleep deprivation is an under-recognized threat to entrepreneurial success.
emilyjp 16y ago
For more information about how to adjust your schedule so that you can fit in the essential 7-8 hours of sleep, why powering down before sleep is so critical and how to do it, and the secret to falling back sleep when you wake up and begin ruminating, register for Tony Schwartz' webinar, Sleep or Die, on March 22 at 1pm EST. Sign up at https://theenergyproject.webex.com/theenergyproject/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=660947476 https://theenergyproject.webex.com/theenergyproject/onstage/...
gordonbowman 16y ago
I was hoping to see some sleep hacks in the comments here. The author cites a few in the article: 1) Naps 2) Go to bed earlier 3) Start winding down at least 45 minutes before 4) Write down what's on your mind Does anyone here have any other sleep hacks to share?
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  4) Stop using an alarm. Wake up when your body tells you to.
  - eru 16y ago
    If you need to be up at a reasonable hour, just keep a clock in reach. You'll wake up several times during the night and morning anyway. Just make it a habit to look at the clock, and check if you can go back to sleep or need to get up. Worked for me the last couple of days.
  - hucker 16y ago
    If I do that I wake up at 4 p.m. What is my body trying to tell me?
    - blrgeek 16y ago
      You need exercise?
- bedris 16y ago
  I think that #4 is extremely important and rarely mentioned. It's much easier to go to bed earlier guilt-free, and to fall asleep once you're there, knowing that you have accounted for ideas-in-progress, you have acknowledged loose ends and unfinished tasks that need to be completed on the following day(s), and that you'll be able to pick up where you left off.
  - gordonbowman 16y ago
    True. It's similar to the advice I've heard to read fiction right before bed instead of non-fiction to ease your mind into rest.
webuiarchitect 16y ago
It is obvious to notice that, this is yet another useless research stat. Everything is equally important for life to survive, breathing, drinking water, food, sleep, exercise. How does it matter if breathing is more important that exercise? It is common sense; you obviously breath more than you do exercise.
nostrademons 16y ago
I totally agreed with the headline, but the evidence in the article doesn't really support it. You might as well say that water is more important than sleep, because you die if you go more than about 3 days without water. The length of time your body can go without something has little relation to how your body acts when deprived of small amounts of that thing, or how it acts when faced with short-term, quickly corrected deficiencies. Heck, breathing is more important than all those things. Go without it for 4 minutes and you're dead. However, many people recommend controlling and slowing your breathing as a way to relax. Is that breathing deprivation?
- eru 16y ago
  By that metric, heart beating is even more import than breathing.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Agreed. The OP conflates significance and urgency. There a many things that are extremely important, yet there is no need to attend to them at a given moment. The OP defeats a straw man. He argues against complete deprivation of sleep, yet his conclusion is based on sleep that isn't limited at all. Proving that something can't be done without entirely is far removed from proving that we can't cut back a bit. He might be right, but for an article intended to be persuasive, he does a bad job of supporting his thesis.
jcromartie 16y ago
Subtext: we're torturing Bradley Manning.
Jach 16y ago
Just take some melatonin and force yourself to sleep in 30 minutes. (Plus it makes 7 hours feel like 8 hours.) If you're still unconvinced: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin.html http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin.html
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Experiment with doses, however. I found that I could be groggy on rising if I took the standard 3mg.
matthodan 16y ago
Has anyone ever successfully sued a company for sleep deprivation? I know investment banks are notorious for requiring junior staff to work without sleep, lest they lose their bonus (or worse).
miles 16y ago
Apparently not for everyone: Ngoc Thai: The Man Who Doesn’t Sleep http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/2855/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/2855/
jmulho 16y ago
> I still take the overnight "redeye" from California to New York, but I'm asleep by takeoff --even if takes an Ambien. Seriously? I bought the guy's argument up until that point.
sp4rki 16y ago
I am guessing that the 2.5% that needs under 8 hours of sleep is composed mainly of people in the tech industry. If I sleep under 5 hours I feel a bit groggy all morning, but if I sleep more than 6 ~ 6 1/2 hours, I feel like utter shit all day long. Incredibly, I was speaking about this same topic with some fellow coworkers and 5 (counting myself) out of 7 felt the same. It might be that they're bullshitting me or maybe the statistics are wrong, but the lack of sleep (as in the people that actually need less daily sleep, not the one's that do so because of lack of 'time') seems to have a correlation with professions that require staring at a screen all daylong. Anyways, in my experience, the number of people that need less than 8 hours of sleep is hugely over 2.5% of the population.
TorbjornLunde 16y ago
“If you leave items in your working memory, they'll make it harder to fall asleep, and you'll end up ruminating about them if you should wake up during the night.” Avoiding thinking about things when you go to bed is something I am struggling quite a bit with. I will sure try out to write down my thoughts. Any other advice to avoid your mind thinking too much when it should be winding down?
- colanderman 16y ago
  Read a boring book, or listen to familiar music. Works well for me.
- lawnchair_larry 16y ago
  I find that listening to interesting music helps. This stimulates my brain just enough to prevent my mind from wandering. Otherwise, yeah, I end up thinking about my unfinished business, or think of "one more thing to try real quick" and then lose hours. Contrary to some advice, I fall asleep pretty well with the TV on or something. If there is nothing stimulating at all, I just toss and turn and think about what else I'd rather be doing. I need a "light distraction" to put myself on idle, or I will start to actively invent my own.
mhitza 16y ago
I was suffering from insomnia for almost 6 days last December, it was an experience, but not one I would ever like to happen again.
atrevisan 16y ago
Isn't Red Bull the same thing as sleep?
mikecarlton 16y ago
Can't think straight because you're too tired? !Try a power nap! A 15 minutes nap in the afternoon (use the timer on your iphone to not oversleep) and you'll be good as new.
hoag 16y ago
Preparing for the California Bar Exam was a fascinating experience for me. Not only was it the most mentally challenging endeavor I had ever undertaken, it proved to be the most psychologically challenging as well. Fortunately, our two bar prep professors were not only licensed attorneys, but also Ph.D.s in neuropsychology. Part of our rigorous training therefore was not simply learning the law, but actually learning how to learn -- in particular, how to store and recall so much data on demand -- and above all, how to manage our time. (It turns out the human brain is actually quite good at writing and storing data, but really bad at what can be best described as "random access memory" operations: recalling random data at will, instantly.) A great deal of emphasis was placed on structuring extremely precise "living schedules," for example, what to study when, for how long, when to eat, what meals, and above all, how and when to sleep. And how to force ourselves to sleep when we couldn't. Long story short, forcing ourselves onto regular sleeping patterns was both immediately necessary and yet proved to be one of the hardest disciplines to learn: to force yourself to stop studying at a given hour (typically 10PM) even in the midst of learning something, and allow time to drive home, have a snack, rest, unwind, and then fall asleep by 11PM, to then awaken at 7 and be back at the library at 8... every single day, for 2 months... that was truly an act of willpower. Especially for me, as I've always been the personality type where, once I start doing or learning something, I can't stop until it's totally finished or mastered. Forcing myself to stop studying without having yet completed the particular matter was excruciatingly difficult. The same thing proved true for the three-day bar exam itself of course: had to sleep between 9 and 10PM and awaken by 6AM, with virtually no studying at all in between days. At this point, you just had to trust your brain to marinate on all that it had absorbed in the 2 months leading up to those fateful three days. Looking back on it now, it was due largely to my discipline with sleeping habits that I was able to pass the bar on my first try.
- forensic 16y ago
  You're assigning your success to disciplined sleeping habits which seems very strange. I would ascribe your success to proper nutrition, proper mnemonics, adequate sleep, and lots of studying. Getting enough sleep (and not too much) is important but what is the advantage of keeping it within those tight boundaries? The natural human sleep cycle is often running on non-24 hour cycles and the science I've seen indicates that if you CAN work on these cycles it enhances memory, cognition and creativity. I don't understand why you give so much credit to your rigid sleep schedule, especially because all the science I've seen indicates that what is important is getting adequate sleep and then studying properly, not sleeping at particular times.
davidmurphy 16y ago
I recommend the book "Power Sleep" by Cornell professor James Maas. http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Performance/dp/0060977604/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286296474&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Per... Exceptional book that really transformed my college experience.
xfilesnetworks 16y ago
yes sounds true. Sleep relax whole your body and thats better to feel. i guess atleast 8 hours sleep is needed as my doctor said me. you can also watch this video to help you more http://www.warezvilla.net/tutorials/23345-deep-mind-brain-evolution.html http://www.warezvilla.net/tutorials/23345-deep-mind-brain-ev...
Jem 16y ago
This guy obviously doesn't have any young children at home. I've forgotten what a good night's sleep is ;)
derekmdurkin 16y ago
Sleep is very important but you cannot discuss proper sleep or proper nutrition without the other. There have been numerous studies showing a correlation between a healthy diet and sleep requirements. People who eat healthy have more energy and feel less tired throughout the day. In the same regard people with an unhealthy diet tend to feel more tired and nap more often and for longer periods of time. Eating foods with a low glycemic index throughout the day will keep you grounded, preventing sugar highs and lows, and overall make you feel less tired. My personal opinion based on my lifestyle is that my nutrition decisions directly affect my sleep requirements. I think it is most important to begin the day with a healthy breakfast upon waking up. This meal should include plenty of fiber, protein, and omega-3 fats.
sarahmccrum 16y ago
I used to sleep 8 to 9 hours a night, and often could have slept more, until I learned how to relax and recharge my energy. Now I need around 4 to 6 hours (absolute max) and I never feel tired, even if I work late, 7 days a week etc etc. Over the last 12 years, when I have worked with many people with a wide range of sleep problems, I have discovered that the problem is not in fact that we do not get enough sleep. I think that with the expectations we put on ourselves these days it is almost impossible to get enough sleep. I found that sleep (and food and the other methods we use) is simply not powerful enough to recharge our batteries properly. Probably 50 years ago it was enough to eat 3 meals a day, sleep 8 hours a night, have weekends and a few weeks holidays every year and so on. My grandfather used to work in the City of London (financial district) and they went to the office in the morning, had a long, sociable lunch and didn't do much else for the rest of the day. Look at bankers and other financial people today and there is simply no comparison. So I believe it will become more and more essential for people to find ways of recharging their energy that are much more powerful than sleep, holidays etc. That's why we are seeing an increase in the number of people meditating, doing yoga and lots of other practices that build energy levels as well as rest.

437 points by panarky 16y ago

brd 16y ago

"Sleep is important" has been a recurring theme for the last couple of years but I am one of the few that don't buy into it at all. Maybe I fall into the 2.5% but if I sleep 8+ hours I feel overslept and groggy. I function moderately to exceptionally well on 6 hours of sleep and often times end up getting more like 3-5 hours of sleep. I've read articles about high functioning executives that barely sleep at all and seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan along with all the standard sleep is so important articles. I think its safe to say the jury is still out on this subject and keep hoping it doesn't continue to over saturate the news/science pipeline for much longer. Until there is a definitive answer you'll continue hearing me say "sleep is overrated".

nopassrecover 16y ago
I agree for the most part. However, try going for a regular run (say 5km) once per week, same day, and track your times. Let's say you hit about 30 minutes first time, and get it down to around 20 mins over a couple of weeks. Now try greater sleep deprivation than normal one week and watch your time plummet.
- dgallagher 16y ago
  It's well known that sleep is an absolute requirement for athletes. If you don't get an optimal amount, performance will suffer: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa062800a.htm http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa062800a....
  - nopassrecover 16y ago
    If it affects peak physical performance, it seems reasonable to suspect it affects peak mental performance (as studies seem to suggest). High functioning executives might get by on little sleep, but would they perform better on more sleep? Are hours clocked more important than output at the executive level?
    - haploid 16y ago
      No, it doesn't seem reasonable at all. Athletic activity causes actual physical microdamage that takes rest time, nutrition, and hormones to repair. The elevated secretion of human growth hormone during REM sleep is a significant reason why athletes perform better on more sleep. No such analogue exists for the human brain. Mental activities, at worst, deplete neurotransmitter levels. I have seen no evidence to suggest that massive dosages of sleep do a better job of restoring these levels than minimally adequate amounts.
      - michaeldhopkins 16y ago
        For mental work, sleep is not replenishment, it's prep work. Your brain is thinking problems while you sleep.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Not only that, sleep also appears to be when your brain reinforces what you've learned... over and over again.
      - jules 16y ago
        I thought it was well known that sleep plays a very important role in learning?
      - nopassrecover 16y ago
        Yet people perform worse mentally without sleep - why would that be if sleep was not vital to mental performance? Have you never needed a nap or coffee to refresh your mind? Do you deny a physical influence on mental faculties?
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        Training involves neural adaptation, a large part of which occurs while sleeping. The systems of the body are not neatly partitioned into modules.
- brd 16y ago
  Considering I used to run Xcountry and have been known to go out for 8+ mile runs in the middle of the night, I'd say for the most part my sleeping habits do not impact how I feel while running. In fact, I'd actually say more exercise is more important than more sleep as I feel much better in general when I am exercising/running regularly, regardless of my sleeping habits. I will absolutely concede that there is a threshold where sleep deprivation will negatively impact my (or anyone's) ability to perform, its just a question of what that threshold actually is.
- dean 16y ago
  I find the same sort of result with coding on little sleep. While it feels like I'm "high functioning" while coding at 4:00AM, a code review in the light of day after a good night's sleep often reveals that I wasn't.
  - danielsoneg 16y ago
    I've begun to suspect this is because we don't notice all the little issues we'd notice if we were more awake - at 4AM, the code is Flying, because I'm not stopping to realize how crappy the code is.
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      I've had similar experiences. If I am very tired I don't get "coder's block", but the code is often rubbish.
winestock 16y ago
Most of what you site is anecdotal evidence. Most likely, you and those executives fall into that 2.5% cohort.
Johngibb 16y ago
"sleep is important" is a lot different than "8+ hours of sleep is important." I'd agree with the former, but agree that the latter is dependent on the individual. Anecdotally, I definitely agree that oversleeping makes meore groggy.
haploid 16y ago
I am in absolute agreement with this. I find that if I sleep more than 6 hours a night, I am actually more tired the following day. Normally, I get 5 hours per night and I rarely experience low levels of functioning or excessive fatigue. And as other have pointed out, the methodology of the cited experiment in the article is highly suspect. Any normal human being, locked in a room with no stimuli, is likely to sleep as much as possible to pass the time.
- jules 16y ago
  At a time when I was sleep deprived I felt completely OK. When I caught up on the sleep I felt worse. I think it's because sleep deprivation also deprives you of the ability to notice the negative effects well enough. That's probably not what's happening with you if you naturally sleep 5 hours per night without an alarm though. If you are using an alarm, you should try sleeping as long as your body feels like for two weeks. Don't block sunlight from your windows, let the sun make sure you wake up if your body thinks you've slept enough. If your body thinks you are still not rested, it will keep you asleep even in sunlight.
flatline 16y ago
I need 8 and often more like 9 or 10 hours of solid sleep each night. If I'm well-rested, one night of 6 or 7 hours doesn't affect me, but it can't happen repeatedly. We may both just be outliers.
_delirium 16y ago
> I've ... seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan The surveys I can find associate "normal" amounts of sleep with better lifespan, and both abnormally high and abnormally low levels of sleep (<5 or 6 and >9 or 10 hours, depending on the study) with various negative outcomes. E.g. this meta-analysis pools prospective studies looking at heart attack and stroke rates: http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/03/eurheartj.ehr007 http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/03...
- brd 16y ago
  Depending on where you look the golden rule for longevity seems to be 6-7 hours of sleep. The interesting thing about 7 being the more common number is that 7 doesn't fit into the commonly held belief that sleeping in sync with 90 minute REM cycles is more healthy/effective. Example of study saying 6-7 hours: http://www.worldhealth.net/news/six_to_seven_hours_sleep_best_for_a_long/ http://www.worldhealth.net/news/six_to_seven_hours_sleep_bes...
dlo 16y ago
> ... seen studies about less sleep improving lifespan... Sleeping less than your own individual sleep need probably does not improve life span. The participants in the studies you're referring to who slept vastly more than others were those with sleeping disorders, some with extremely bad sleep apnea. They felt the need to sleep more because the quality of their sleep was so poor. But of course, having a lot of poor-quality sleep is not equivalent to having fewer hours of good-quality sleep. The contribution I would like to make to this discussion is that each person's sleep need is individual.

winestock 16y ago

Schools such as Caltech and MIT have rigorous curricula that proverbially requires constant study every day of the week just to stay in the middle of the pack. Naturally, most students cut back on sleep. Proponents of this approach are aware of this, even boast about it, saying that this is the best way to learn the material. On the other hand, numerous studies -- including the link at the top of this page -- conclude that this is the worst way to get anything done. They can't both be right.

kscaldef 16y ago
No, those schools have cultures that promote such behavior. I was a grad student and TA at Caltech and observed that the undergrads had horrible time management skills. Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm. (I'm not specifically picking on Caltech undergrads, BTW. I'm fairly sure this is typical at most schools.)
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm." This may be true, but there are also plenty of students who work from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed and still don't have enough time to get all of their assignments done. The problem is that functionally there isn't really any difference between having a 3.5 GPA and a 2.0 GPA, so at some point most people figure out that what they're being asked to do is impossible so they might as well just do their own thing.
  - dkarl 16y ago
    Perhaps they should have gone somewhere else where they had time to sleep and think instead of just studying all the time. I know that where I work, the folks who are willing to grind the hardest on assigned work are rarely the ones you turn to for difficult and responsible work. The very best people are the ones who work extremely hard at self-directed work and sometimes push back against assigned work, but they are very, very rare, much rarer than people who are willing to grind day and night on whatever you assign them. The best person for difficult assignments is usually someone who refuses to overwork himself or herself.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

Hey! Put me in a locked room with no windows and no clocks, and I'll sleep 7 hours too - out of boredom.

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nopassrecover 16y ago

"So how much sleep do you need? When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours." The broken link there is meant to point to (http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-m...) and I can't spot where it mentions this study. In any case, you put me in a room with no clock or windows (and presumably no serious stimuli as it's likely to influence the results) and I can bet you I'll sleep twice as much - out of pure boredom.

eru 16y ago
I read about some such experiments. Some people actually preferred it, and used the distraction free environment to finish their PhD theses.
dazmax 16y ago
I think the theory is that once you've fully slept off your sleep debt (which I've heard can be up to 40 hours) you are no longer able to sleep much more than your natural sleep requirement, bored or not.
- eru 16y ago
  Interesting. I can sleep for 12 hours several nights in a row.
- hucker 16y ago
  Very interesting, do you have any sources on this? If I forget to set my alarm I can easily sleep for 14-16 hours before I wake, any day of the week. If one possible solution to this is to go on a total sleeping binge for a week or so I'd be thrilled!

giu 16y ago

A tool I've been using for the past days: http://sleepyti.me/ http://sleepyti.me/ I'm currently testing it. The last two days I went to bed at a time which the tool suggested; getting up wasn't much of an issue, and I felt some improvements, but it's definitely too early to say that it works for me.

adamzap 16y ago
sleep_times = [wake_time - 1.5 * x for x in range(3, 7)][::-1] Is that really all that's happening here?
- kvdr 16y ago
  Yep. Basically one sleep cycle is 90mins. So it just gives you 3-4 times based on minimum 2 cycles. Nothing fancy.
goombastic 16y ago
Nice!! :)
bvi 16y ago
Placebo effect, more than anything else.
a-priori 16y ago
Placebo effect. Sleep doesn't work in neat 90 minute cycles. They're really longer in the early part of the night, and get faster and more biased towards REM in the later part of the night. The details are very individual and also vary night to night, so you can't predict with any accuracy at the start of the night what stage you'll be in at 7:00:00AM the next morning. (Anecdote: A friend of mine used to swear by a theory, mostly as a joke, that the recipe for good night's sleep was sleeping an odd number of hours. One day he came all happy and said, "Thank God 15 is an odd number!")
john2x 16y ago
I don't get this. Why are there 4 different suggested times?

kgtm 16y ago

I wish there was a way for me to sleep less than 9 hours. At least now i have a great excuse for people calling me lazy. I am special!

faragon 16y ago
Try with daily jogging (30-40 minutes/day). I bet you'll feel better and will have enough sleeping 7.5-8h.

briandoll 16y ago

If you're interested in a more anthropological perspective on sleep and its importance, check out "Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival" (http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/0671038680 http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/067...)

ylem 16y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm someone who sleeps on average 6 hours/night. When I have experiments, then I sometimes drop down to 4 hrs/night. I've found that I can manage with 4 hrs/night for about a week (it has gotten a bit harder with age)--BUT I know that I'm not as effective or creative when dealing with such little amounts of sleep. I also know that I'm more prone to make errors and try to develop habits so that I do the "right thing (TM)" when I'm too tired to think (it's like martial arts where you train reflexes...). I also try to know when to throw in the towel and just go home because if I stay I'm likely enough to make a mistake that will cost me more time in the end, or I need sleep so that I can think about something. However, in normal running mode, 6 hrs (as long as I'm getting exercise) feels normal to me and it's what I sleep even without an alarm unless I'm recovering from severe sleep deprivation (I don't drink coffee and generally just drink tea when I really need to stay awake...). What are other people's experiences? Somehow the dark room scenario in the article seems unrealistic. I do agree that for creative work that more sleep (in my case 6 hr/night) seems necessary--but if I find myself sleeping longer (like say 9 hrs), then I just end up feeling more tired...

adriand 16y ago
I'm with you on this. Like most people, I would like to consistently get 7-8 hours of sleep a night, but I've got two young children, a packed work schedule, and volunteer commitments. These days I'm operating on about 5 hours of sleep per night and I'm functioning fine. If I wasn't up at 5:00 am to get a couple of hours of work in before my kids are up at 7, I'd be falling behind right now. I'm probably making more errors than I would normally but they're mainly minor. By about 8:00 pm I get pretty fatigued and I may nap for 10 minutes at this time, to recharge for the evening. The work I am doing is challenging but for the moment doesn't require a lot of creativity, so the tradeoff between the sheer amount of work I can get done versus the decrease in errors is worth it to me at the moment. I do exercise pretty consistently however (approx. 4 times/week for 30 to 45 minutes) and I find this invaluable in terms of keeping me less stressed and more productive.

Splatchar 16y ago

Sleep may be more important than food but, interestingly, there seems to be a relationship between sleep and food. When fasting, less sleep is required. However, when sleep is curtailed, there is a greater desire for food.

Vivtek 16y ago
I always figured if you're awake instead of asleep, you're actually consuming more calories and thus need more food.

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jonmc12 16y ago

I'm surprised this article is at the top of HN. 1) It is not the announcement of a research study, rather it is just referencing previous hbr blogs and sleepfoundation.org's general guidelines for sleep. 2) It offers no unique advice. 3) The title is basic linkbait (ie, its not really about food vs sleep). Why the upvotes? is it because everyone is tired?

BoppreH 16y ago
It may not be new or unique, but I didn't know sleep was that important. And no, I'm not tired.
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jey 16y ago
The research is voluminous and has been around for a long time. Articles like this make the results easy for us normals to digest. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+deprivation&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+deprivation&hl...
- Natsu 16y ago
  In experiments, rats have actually been killed by lack of sleep. Mind you, it took about a month as I recall, but it's still a bit scary.
- jonmc12 16y ago
  I think this is what surprises me - this is hacker news, not normals news. How interesting is a safe interpretation of the research that conforms to what I was taught in 2nd grade? Its like someone posted an article extolling the virtues of the food pyramid or something. Even my doctor has a more liberal interpretation of the research than this particular author (and he is probably more qualified to make this interpretation). In the past I've experimented with quantities of sleep, polyphasic sleep, measuring sleep quality, light / sound in the room, sleep supplements, etc, etc. Why? because sleep takes up 25-30% of my life. Its a no brainer activity for me to try to hack and optimize. Further, given sleep is such a big part of all of our lives, I'm surprised more people on this site do not have a similar mindset about experimenting and tweaking their sleep patterns. Show me some articles with new research, personal experiments, or useful tips that can allow me to hack my sleep - these kind of interpretations are much more useful to digest.

mrspandex 16y ago

People say that you'll die... faster than without water but we know it's just a lie Scare your son, scare your daughter

amitraman1 16y ago

Sleep rocks! I am in the 2.5% that sleep 8 hours or more. I am much more productive during the day as a result. I am alert, my brain spins faster and I can take on more challenges. My friend is a superstar scientist/M.D. and he sleeps 9 or more hours a day. The "executives" who sleep < 7 hours need to fine a hour more. If I was a board member, I'd insist my C-level team sleep 8 hours!

orijing 16y ago

Something I observed from reading the comments here: A lot of us can function on much fewer hours of sleep regularly and don't believe it adversely affects our performance (It does affect mine though). Does anyone think there may be some selection going on here? What I mean is, perhaps it's true that HN's distribution is more skewed toward the side of people who need less sleep (and hence has more productive hours in the day) and are willing to sleep less in order to get things done. Maybe we don't really represent the general population. Just a warning in case anyone takes our testimonials too seriously.

KC8ZKF 16y ago
Everybody thinks they are above average. "I can exceed the speed limits, because I am an excellent driver." "I need less sleep than the average person."
eavc 16y ago
Can function or can function optimally? Some research shows that mood is impacted more drastically than function. Since burnout and perseverance are such key topics (and emotionally dependent ones), maybe heroic sleep deprivation is an under-recognized threat to entrepreneurial success.

emilyjp 16y ago

For more information about how to adjust your schedule so that you can fit in the essential 7-8 hours of sleep, why powering down before sleep is so critical and how to do it, and the secret to falling back sleep when you wake up and begin ruminating, register for Tony Schwartz' webinar, Sleep or Die, on March 22 at 1pm EST. Sign up at https://theenergyproject.webex.com/theenergyproject/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=660947476 https://theenergyproject.webex.com/theenergyproject/onstage/...

gordonbowman 16y ago

I was hoping to see some sleep hacks in the comments here. The author cites a few in the article: 1) Naps 2) Go to bed earlier 3) Start winding down at least 45 minutes before 4) Write down what's on your mind Does anyone here have any other sleep hacks to share?

rokhayakebe 16y ago
4) Stop using an alarm. Wake up when your body tells you to.
- eru 16y ago
  If you need to be up at a reasonable hour, just keep a clock in reach. You'll wake up several times during the night and morning anyway. Just make it a habit to look at the clock, and check if you can go back to sleep or need to get up. Worked for me the last couple of days.
- hucker 16y ago
  If I do that I wake up at 4 p.m. What is my body trying to tell me?
  - blrgeek 16y ago
    You need exercise?
bedris 16y ago
I think that #4 is extremely important and rarely mentioned. It's much easier to go to bed earlier guilt-free, and to fall asleep once you're there, knowing that you have accounted for ideas-in-progress, you have acknowledged loose ends and unfinished tasks that need to be completed on the following day(s), and that you'll be able to pick up where you left off.
- gordonbowman 16y ago
  True. It's similar to the advice I've heard to read fiction right before bed instead of non-fiction to ease your mind into rest.

webuiarchitect 16y ago

It is obvious to notice that, this is yet another useless research stat. Everything is equally important for life to survive, breathing, drinking water, food, sleep, exercise. How does it matter if breathing is more important that exercise? It is common sense; you obviously breath more than you do exercise.

nostrademons 16y ago

I totally agreed with the headline, but the evidence in the article doesn't really support it. You might as well say that water is more important than sleep, because you die if you go more than about 3 days without water. The length of time your body can go without something has little relation to how your body acts when deprived of small amounts of that thing, or how it acts when faced with short-term, quickly corrected deficiencies. Heck, breathing is more important than all those things. Go without it for 4 minutes and you're dead. However, many people recommend controlling and slowing your breathing as a way to relax. Is that breathing deprivation?

eru 16y ago
By that metric, heart beating is even more import than breathing.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
Agreed. The OP conflates significance and urgency. There a many things that are extremely important, yet there is no need to attend to them at a given moment. The OP defeats a straw man. He argues against complete deprivation of sleep, yet his conclusion is based on sleep that isn't limited at all. Proving that something can't be done without entirely is far removed from proving that we can't cut back a bit. He might be right, but for an article intended to be persuasive, he does a bad job of supporting his thesis.

jcromartie 16y ago

Subtext: we're torturing Bradley Manning.

Jach 16y ago

Just take some melatonin and force yourself to sleep in 30 minutes. (Plus it makes 7 hours feel like 8 hours.) If you're still unconvinced: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin.html http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin.html

jacques_chester 16y ago
Experiment with doses, however. I found that I could be groggy on rising if I took the standard 3mg.

matthodan 16y ago

Has anyone ever successfully sued a company for sleep deprivation? I know investment banks are notorious for requiring junior staff to work without sleep, lest they lose their bonus (or worse).

miles 16y ago

Apparently not for everyone: Ngoc Thai: The Man Who Doesn’t Sleep http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/2855/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/2855/

jmulho 16y ago

> I still take the overnight "redeye" from California to New York, but I'm asleep by takeoff --even if takes an Ambien. Seriously? I bought the guy's argument up until that point.

sp4rki 16y ago

I am guessing that the 2.5% that needs under 8 hours of sleep is composed mainly of people in the tech industry. If I sleep under 5 hours I feel a bit groggy all morning, but if I sleep more than 6 ~ 6 1/2 hours, I feel like utter shit all day long. Incredibly, I was speaking about this same topic with some fellow coworkers and 5 (counting myself) out of 7 felt the same. It might be that they're bullshitting me or maybe the statistics are wrong, but the lack of sleep (as in the people that actually need less daily sleep, not the one's that do so because of lack of 'time') seems to have a correlation with professions that require staring at a screen all daylong. Anyways, in my experience, the number of people that need less than 8 hours of sleep is hugely over 2.5% of the population.

TorbjornLunde 16y ago

“If you leave items in your working memory, they'll make it harder to fall asleep, and you'll end up ruminating about them if you should wake up during the night.” Avoiding thinking about things when you go to bed is something I am struggling quite a bit with. I will sure try out to write down my thoughts. Any other advice to avoid your mind thinking too much when it should be winding down?

colanderman 16y ago
Read a boring book, or listen to familiar music. Works well for me.
lawnchair_larry 16y ago
I find that listening to interesting music helps. This stimulates my brain just enough to prevent my mind from wandering. Otherwise, yeah, I end up thinking about my unfinished business, or think of "one more thing to try real quick" and then lose hours. Contrary to some advice, I fall asleep pretty well with the TV on or something. If there is nothing stimulating at all, I just toss and turn and think about what else I'd rather be doing. I need a "light distraction" to put myself on idle, or I will start to actively invent my own.

mhitza 16y ago

I was suffering from insomnia for almost 6 days last December, it was an experience, but not one I would ever like to happen again.

atrevisan 16y ago

Isn't Red Bull the same thing as sleep?

mikecarlton 16y ago

Can't think straight because you're too tired? !Try a power nap! A 15 minutes nap in the afternoon (use the timer on your iphone to not oversleep) and you'll be good as new.

hoag 16y ago

Preparing for the California Bar Exam was a fascinating experience for me. Not only was it the most mentally challenging endeavor I had ever undertaken, it proved to be the most psychologically challenging as well. Fortunately, our two bar prep professors were not only licensed attorneys, but also Ph.D.s in neuropsychology. Part of our rigorous training therefore was not simply learning the law, but actually learning how to learn -- in particular, how to store and recall so much data on demand -- and above all, how to manage our time. (It turns out the human brain is actually quite good at writing and storing data, but really bad at what can be best described as "random access memory" operations: recalling random data at will, instantly.) A great deal of emphasis was placed on structuring extremely precise "living schedules," for example, what to study when, for how long, when to eat, what meals, and above all, how and when to sleep. And how to force ourselves to sleep when we couldn't. Long story short, forcing ourselves onto regular sleeping patterns was both immediately necessary and yet proved to be one of the hardest disciplines to learn: to force yourself to stop studying at a given hour (typically 10PM) even in the midst of learning something, and allow time to drive home, have a snack, rest, unwind, and then fall asleep by 11PM, to then awaken at 7 and be back at the library at 8... every single day, for 2 months... that was truly an act of willpower. Especially for me, as I've always been the personality type where, once I start doing or learning something, I can't stop until it's totally finished or mastered. Forcing myself to stop studying without having yet completed the particular matter was excruciatingly difficult. The same thing proved true for the three-day bar exam itself of course: had to sleep between 9 and 10PM and awaken by 6AM, with virtually no studying at all in between days. At this point, you just had to trust your brain to marinate on all that it had absorbed in the 2 months leading up to those fateful three days. Looking back on it now, it was due largely to my discipline with sleeping habits that I was able to pass the bar on my first try.

forensic 16y ago
You're assigning your success to disciplined sleeping habits which seems very strange. I would ascribe your success to proper nutrition, proper mnemonics, adequate sleep, and lots of studying. Getting enough sleep (and not too much) is important but what is the advantage of keeping it within those tight boundaries? The natural human sleep cycle is often running on non-24 hour cycles and the science I've seen indicates that if you CAN work on these cycles it enhances memory, cognition and creativity. I don't understand why you give so much credit to your rigid sleep schedule, especially because all the science I've seen indicates that what is important is getting adequate sleep and then studying properly, not sleeping at particular times.

davidmurphy 16y ago

I recommend the book "Power Sleep" by Cornell professor James Maas. http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Performance/dp/0060977604/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286296474&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Per... Exceptional book that really transformed my college experience.

xfilesnetworks 16y ago

yes sounds true. Sleep relax whole your body and thats better to feel. i guess atleast 8 hours sleep is needed as my doctor said me. you can also watch this video to help you more http://www.warezvilla.net/tutorials/23345-deep-mind-brain-evolution.html http://www.warezvilla.net/tutorials/23345-deep-mind-brain-ev...

Jem 16y ago

This guy obviously doesn't have any young children at home. I've forgotten what a good night's sleep is ;)

derekmdurkin 16y ago

Sleep is very important but you cannot discuss proper sleep or proper nutrition without the other. There have been numerous studies showing a correlation between a healthy diet and sleep requirements. People who eat healthy have more energy and feel less tired throughout the day. In the same regard people with an unhealthy diet tend to feel more tired and nap more often and for longer periods of time. Eating foods with a low glycemic index throughout the day will keep you grounded, preventing sugar highs and lows, and overall make you feel less tired. My personal opinion based on my lifestyle is that my nutrition decisions directly affect my sleep requirements. I think it is most important to begin the day with a healthy breakfast upon waking up. This meal should include plenty of fiber, protein, and omega-3 fats.

sarahmccrum 16y ago

I used to sleep 8 to 9 hours a night, and often could have slept more, until I learned how to relax and recharge my energy. Now I need around 4 to 6 hours (absolute max) and I never feel tired, even if I work late, 7 days a week etc etc. Over the last 12 years, when I have worked with many people with a wide range of sleep problems, I have discovered that the problem is not in fact that we do not get enough sleep. I think that with the expectations we put on ourselves these days it is almost impossible to get enough sleep. I found that sleep (and food and the other methods we use) is simply not powerful enough to recharge our batteries properly. Probably 50 years ago it was enough to eat 3 meals a day, sleep 8 hours a night, have weekends and a few weeks holidays every year and so on. My grandfather used to work in the City of London (financial district) and they went to the office in the morning, had a long, sociable lunch and didn't do much else for the rest of the day. Look at bankers and other financial people today and there is simply no comparison. So I believe it will become more and more essential for people to find ways of recharging their energy that are much more powerful than sleep, holidays etc. That's why we are seeing an increase in the number of people meditating, doing yoga and lots of other practices that build energy levels as well as rest.