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The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

• rckoepke 6y ago
  I'm amazed by how thoroughly he wrote up the experiment.
  • pstuart 6y ago
    yeah, with a sample size of 1 and the subject at a prime point in maturation. What's the lesson learned from this? Disclaimer: this experiment would destroy me (but I'm old enough to be the author's father).
    • icelancer 6y ago
      > What's the lesson learned from this? That sleep is complicated, and that people doing scientific case studies contributes to the overall corpus of material we have to inspire others. There need not be a breakthrough everytime you do a case study for science to be useful and we should stop expecting that.
      • pstuart 6y ago
        I understand that sleep is complicated, and also that there's a wide variance in how people respond to sleep (and lack of same). I wasn't trying to shit on the OP, just that this made it to the front page of HN and has no takeaway from it. All I learned is some 22 year old guy was able to function fine on minimal sleep. Did I miss something else? I'm genuinely curious because this is actually a subject of great interest to me.
    • virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
      Haha, this is exactly what I was thinking reading this. I'm a single parent of 2 kids and the sleep-related impact on my cognitive ability is, uh, marked ;)
    • jjdredd 6y ago
      Even 1-2 days of bad sleep (< 6 hrs) would destroy me either now or back when I was 20.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• hpoe 6y ago
  I am fascinated by this, when I was younger I was obsessed with cutting out sleep, experimenting with polyphasic sleep, energy drinks etc. I'll add one other anecdote that I don't know what it means, but I had a project I was working on that was tight deadline, as a result I was only able to get two hours a sleep a night for about a week. For some reason once I got past the third day my tiredness and desire to sleep seemed to dip considerably, and I found that staying awake when engaged in any activity or discussion was easier. If I was just sitting in a meeting or presentation that I wasn't very interested in I would doze off, but as long as I was engaged I felt like I didn't need to sleep at all. I really wish we knew more about sleep.
  • guzey 6y ago
    this is very interesting. Have you tried doing it again?
• jrootabega 6y ago
  > However, for the entire duration of the experiment I had to resist regular urges to sleep and on several occasions when I did not want to play video games was very close to failing the experiment, having at one point fallen asleep in my chair and being awakened a few minutes later by my wife. I don't really believe this, and I find this interesting and impressive,but this sounds like a George Costanza scheme after getting caught playing video games or sleeping too much
  • guzey 6y ago
    I'm not sure why you don't really believe this. I didn't really have to mention this, did I?..
    • jrootabega 6y ago
      No I meant I didn't believe it was a scheme
      • guzey 6y ago
        Ah.
• akersten 6y ago
  I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule and were disciplined about napping on time. I never had the scheduling freedom available to actually give it a go, and accounts of others trying it seemed to indicate that it was actually pretty awful to keep up. This article seems promising, but it's a relatively short experiment. Would be interesting to see what happened after a year of 4 hour sleep. Based on the author's description, sounds like their body was trying to force them asleep at every turn and they had to fight through it. That would be hard to maintain long-term. I truly wish one day we can isolate and synthesize whatever magical thing happens during sleep and recover some useful time. This seems much more practical than life-expectancy extension to me. As long as, of course, employers don't take it upon themselves to increase the workday as well. I'd rather sleep than work. [0]: https://polyphasic.net/schedules/uberman/ https://polyphasic.net/schedules/uberman/
  • klodolph 6y ago
    I’d say that the idea that we can recover wasted time sleeping is predicated on the idea that sleep is not a useful thing to do with our time. I think the current consensus is that there is actually many different things that our bodies and minds do while sleeping, so you couldn’t isolate one benefit of sleep and replicate it, you’d have to replicate five or ten different benefits of sleep, or more. If you want to recover some time, try Soylent, moving closer to the office, hiring a maid to do the cleaning, etc. Assuming that these are within your means, you can recover quite a bit of time that way.
    • pureliquidhw 6y ago
      +1 to a maid. You can get someone to clean, do laundry, and possibly cook 2x a week for less than $10k ($200 week * 50 weeks) a year in a mid-sized metro. Possibly even cheaper. Any couple that bickers about cleaning at all should try a maid before a divorce or couples counseling.
• mellosouls 6y ago
  An academic study (2007): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/
• Kooshaba 6y ago
  You can't fool me, I know this was just an excuse to improve your FPS aim! Jokes aside, really good read. I had similar goals of cutting out sleep when I was younger. I'm curious what the authors mood was throughout the experiment. That's the main thing I've noticed when not getting enough sleep. My output may be good, I may feel engaged, but every second of the day is torture.
  • guzey 6y ago
    Thanks! I didn't notice any effects on mood but I wasn't measuring them either.
• icelancer 6y ago
  The guzey_arena_0 test could be biased by his skill level improving over time by playing it regularly, though if he was an avid FPS gamer prior to the guzey_arena_0 tests, the asymptotic growth of skill had probably leveled off in time. I didn't see this addressed in the paper outside of this section: "I will give myself a sleep opportunity of 8 hours (23:30-07:30). I will practice the tasks I’m going to use in order to mitigate the most extreme practice effects during the experiment. I will perform all tasks as follows: Aimgod guzey_arena_0 at 12:30-12:50, 15:30-15:50, 18:30-18:50 and 21:30-21:50 (I also played about 2 hours of guzey_arena_0 on 2020-03-31 and 2020-04-01 while designing the experiment)" That might not have been enough to blunt the practice effect. Still I think it's valid data - might have been better if he played guzey_arena_0 for a period beforehand on normal sleep until his improvements leveled off.
  • silverdrake11 6y ago
    It looks like he played the game one week before the experiment, during it, and after three days of recovery and did not find a significant difference
    • guzey 6y ago
      Exactly -- practice effects should have been averaged out by this.
• gumby 6y ago
  Back in the 1980s this was expected of MIT undergrads. Took me over a decade and some difficult effort to extract myself from chronic lack of sleep. I feel likeI was a lot smarter and more productive when I get 6 hrs minimum. I am a lot healthier on other metrics as well. Perhaps this shows that a coupled weeks is OK. Certainly it helped me in my 20s — I could hold down a job and still spend evenings at clubs with my gf and then wife. So in that way I was a good spouse(!) A broader study would be interesting too — according to my pediatrician mother I didn’t sleep much even as a baby / toddler.
• gregwebs 6y ago
  This study can lead one to conclude that at least some people can function well for short-term periods of sleep deficit, at least when performing stimulating activities. However, we also have studies showing that people are very poor at recognizing when they are being affected by sleep deficit, so you would need to run this experiment on yourself first before concluding it applies to you!
• chrisco255 6y ago
  Anecdotally, playing a high-intensity video game like an FPS or RTS, wakes me up and allows me to fend off sleep for a long period of time.
• praptak 6y ago
  "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker summarizes quite a lot of research on sleep. It leaves little doubt - we currently know of no safe way to significantly cut down sleep. I haven't seen the research presented in that book being refuted.
  • hpoe 6y ago
    https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ For those interested in someone who created a refutation to Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep"
    • piercebot 6y ago
      This refutation is authored by the same person who conducted the study to which these comments are attached :)
      • praptak 6y ago
        I did some digging and it is pretty solid to me. It's sad that Walker did not respond to this.
        • fossuser 6y ago
          He did (poorly) and not in a single easily read location.
        • texascloud 6y ago
          Proof of digging?
    • texascloud 6y ago
      I wouldn't say this is refuting even a minority of claims in the book. It appears to be a thorough fact check of a small percentage of claims, some of which is going after the author over wording and inconsistencies. It's fair criticism, but by no means invalidates a majority of the information regarding sleep that Walker presents
• iamleppert 6y ago
  A properly constructed experiment wouldn't alert the subjects sleep is being measured and instead simply prompt them for how much time they slept in a questionnaire taken after the tests, or better yet have them wear a tracking device prior to the study to measure their regular sleep pattern, and only select subjects for testing that have deviated from their regular sleep pattern. My theory is that a sudden change in sleep habits is what causes the cognitive decline.
• non-entity 6y ago
  I've probably done a month or two of 4 hours a night at least. My sleep is all over the place. At times, I'll slip into occasional microsleeps at the office where I basically pass put for a split second (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep) Very recently however, I had a two night bout of nearly total sleep deprivation (I maybe got 3 or 4 hours in a 48 hour period) and it was absolutely terrible. The second morning it was incredibly difficult to concentrate and I couldn't keep a coherent thought for a couple hours. However normally when I'm sleep deprived I can power through the morning hours and be ok the rest of the day. I did not want another night of that so I grabbed a variety of otc sleep aids hoping to find one or a combination which would knock me out. Luckily I was able to knock myself out the next night and ended that for the time being.
  • herman_toothrot 6y ago
    What did you find that helped you get to sleep?
    • non-entity 6y ago
      I tried a mix of Unisom (doxylamine) and melatonin that night and I managed to fall asleep, although it took a good while and didnt think it was gonna happen at first. I've had mixed results with melatonin before and DPH based sleep aids (benadryl, Zquil) tend to make me drowsy as hell for a few hours without falling asleep If something like that happens again though, I'll probably see a doctor.
• karpierz 6y ago
  It seems like the author tested rote activities that were well within their comfort zone; I'd be curious to see how well they'd perform when trying to learn something new or work at something that they hadn't practiced before.
  • bufferoverflow 6y ago
    It's hard to find a "new thing" to learn that you can reliably compare to the previous "new things".
  • JJMcJ 6y ago
    Or drive 60 miles in rush hour traffic.
  • lolc 6y ago
    Given that sleep deprivation is commonly assumed to lead to worsening reaction times, rote tasks should show an effect. It is interesting they didn't. Apart from that, I agree that there is more to sleep deprivation than reaction performance. For example, some of my most creative moments were in highly sleep-deprived states. But how am I supposed to measure that?
    • karpierz 6y ago
      It's interesting, but it doesn't look like the reaction time windows are particularly tight. 500ms is a generous reaction time. And the FPS scenario didn't really test snap accuracy or reaction time, the limiting factor on completion time seems largely dependent on movement. I think a more interesting metric of reaction time would be using a competitive FPS or fighting game, that require tight reaction times and decision making. That way, any change in reaction time will be reflected.
  • guzey 6y ago
    I hope to test skill acquisition during the next experiment!
• snowwrestler 6y ago
  When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don't keep going. I find my mind wandering more easily, checking in on social media more, and then time passing more quickly when I do. I'm more likely to look up from Twitter or HN and be surprised at the time. In short I don't seem to be any dumber while doing something, but number of things I get done in a typical time periods declines. As I have come to understand this impact, it has given me greater empathy for addicts. My brain doesn't feel like a tired muscle, or like I'm doing anything wrong in the moment. It's only later, when I look back, that I realize I was making bad decisions and losing time. It has just reinforced how hard it is to use decision-making to recover from a situation where the brain has already been compromised by bad decisions.
  • kstrauser 6y ago
    I came here to say this. I can still get stuff done and answer questions, but I have the attention span of a goldfish.
  • fegu 6y ago
    I came here to say this as well. Me exactly.
  • oh-4-fucks-sake 6y ago
    I think that's what other recent psychological/neurological research has found too (citation needed--but do remember reading about it recently from multiple sources). It figures that everyone each has their individual baseline "propensity to stay focused"--and sleep deprivation degrades someone's focus below that. You take a normal person and sleep deprive them, and their "propensity to stay focused" is lowered, but still might fall within an acceptable/functional range. One theory that's gaining traction is that people with ADHD have a somewhat lower baseline than average, and when you throw in sleep deprivation, their "propensity to focus" falls into dysfunctional territory. Ergo, ADHD might have a large sleep component. In all cases (which corroborates with your experiences), they found that people are really poor at actively self-detecting those fluctuations.
• rkagerer 6y ago
  Was his assessment basically just playing video games? I've noticed that's an activity I can do proficiently for an extended duration on very little sleep (along with things like "bulk" coding) but there are others I'm awful at unless I'm well rested (eg. complex planning, creative efforts like songwriting) and I've found my communication skills start to become impaired when I'm really sleep deprived. I'd be curious to see how he performs on a broader spectrum of cognitive and even physical assessments.
  • T-hawk 6y ago
    What type of video games? That matters a lot to me. I can play a turn-based game like Civilization completely fine on little sleep (measuring the quality of play objectively, like by productivity or victory within a certain number of turns.) Soft real-time games like say a Mario platformer are a little worse but playable if I'm tired. Hard real-time games with very tight and sensitive timing like Guitar Hero or high-level Tetris are unplayable at anywhere near peak form if I'm not fully rested.
    • thealfreds 6y ago
      Games requiring long term focus, chess for example, I personally have difficulty playing when sleep deprived, even though it is turn based. I find I play at ~200 rating points lower on low sleep.
      • Spooky23 6y ago
        I think it's an inverted U curve. Games that require fast response and planning suffer on one extreme, and abstract thinking games like chess suffer on the other.
      • koheripbal 6y ago
        The real question is whether this penalty goes away once you adjust to your new sleep schedule.
      • adt2bt 6y ago
        Agreed. Many a late sleepless night have I blown 200 points or more on frustrating blitz games. I would regularly play a game or two during lunch breaks, climb a good bit, then stay up too late one night and rage throw my points into the abyss.
• always_left 6y ago
  I normally have always slept for around 4-5 hours a night since I can remember. Only noticeable health consequence I've noticed is pre-hypertension, but that could be a mix of anxiety and/or hereditary.
• biophysboy 6y ago
  Guzey had another blog post on Matthew Walker's sleep book posted on HN a while back. I thought it was a bad faith critique, from my own biophysics perspective. We had some back and forth, guzey seemed nice & respectful enough, but I still had my misgivings about the critique. Sleep is very much an open question. HN seems to really love maximizing cognition and the overall efficiency of their life. That said, if you want to try this experiment yourself, know this: sleep also affects mood, memory, and longevity (e.g. dementia). Chronic sleep deprivation is not good for you.
  • lolc 6y ago
    I found the critique very convincing. What do you disagree with? > Sleep is very much an open question. Walker's book is very much at odds with that statement.
    • biophysboy 6y ago
      I guess it depends on what you mean by convincing. If by convincing you mean Walker played fast and loose with some of his data presentation, then I'd have a hard time disagreeing. He was also pushing the marketing circuit hard back when that blog post went up (NPR, Rogan, etc). Which can make him feel like a snake oil salesman. So I understand the suspicion But if by convincing you mean that guzey brought us back to square one - that is, sleep might not be as important as we think - then I don't think its a convincing critique.
      • lolc 6y ago
        Yes by convincing I mean it convinced me that Walker is a quack. Way beyond suspicion. As an author he didn't only waste the time I spent reading his book. He put bullshit in my head. I can't fully protect myself against that, but I don't generally give people a second chance on it. I didn't get a "sleep less" message from the critique. Just a "don't read Walker" message. It feels weirdly patronizing to suggest that the critique is wrong when you just fear people will sleep less after reading it. Why not say that right away?
  • 6y ago
• hyfgfh 6y ago
  Not a good ideas, just ask the Shadow people
• Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > The Effects on Cognition of Sleeping 4 Hours per Night I lived like this for nearly 5 years. I knew I was taking my health to an extreme so I did intermittent fasting (but ate one large meal with 7:5:1 fat-plant/carb-protein ratio and it was all organic) and worked out on a regular basis before I slept 3-5 times a week. I also had physical labour jobs with some driving involved on top of typical tech based startup stuff at night while trying to maintain relationships. It was taxing to say the least. What I did noticed when I stopped living that way was that it felt like a fog was lifted and I stopped hearing what had become an omnipresent high pitch sound like the kind you get when you get hit hard in the head, also before I could only work optimally for maybe 7 hours max a day so I had to prioritize/schedule my day accordingly as the rest was a sluggish grind by comparison. I took cheater naps where I could, but simply put: those were brutal times. Also my raw strength got way better, likely because of re-introducing a recovery period, and my PB and max lifts went up 35% in almost all of my lifts and exercises. I think I'm at higher than my peak years in early university at this point on single max lifts. Personally, I realized my most optimized sleep-work schedule follows a 6-3-6-3-6 routine (6 hours of work, with 3 hours pause to eat/sleep in between). I've cranked a ton of things that way, its not ideal as it doesn't allow for much leisure but if I need to get things done and I can afford to have that schedule I'll do it and get amazing results I can't emulate any other way.
• spacephysics 6y ago
  Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I’ve made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don’t ‘use’ all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep: * Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries) * Sleep was more restorative when I woke up * Emotions far more regulated (less irritable) * Quicker to come up with on the spot jokes, or come up with a refutation to an argument * Gym performance +30% at least * Gym recovery faster * Short and long term memory improvement * Less health flair ups * Reduction in brain fog It’s hard to notice these differences subjectively unless you know what it’s like when you’re “optimized” Following a keto (or carnivore with a focus on ketosis) diet leads to a further boost across the dimensions mentioned above. I think many people outside of self-optimization don’t realize what they’re sacrificing when they choose to forego sleep. Even total productivity is enhanced, despite working less hours due to sleeping. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
  • bentcorner 6y ago
    Just recently since I've been working from home all the time, I realized I don't actually need an alarm to get up, since I don't need to leave the house at a predetermined time to beat traffic and get to the office at a reasonable time. Getting up at the same time in the morning was just habit. Instead now I have an alarm to go bed, and I get up when I feel rested.
    • blackflame7000 6y ago
      If your schedule/living situation allows, keeping a window open for early morning sunlight to rise helps to reduce the initial haze quickly if present at all.
    • gre 6y ago
      I set an alarm for 9am so I don't oversleep but usually get up well before that.
  • DominikPeters 6y ago
• NewEntryHN 6y ago
  > assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT Now try work.
  • yovagoyu 6y ago
    Couldn't agree more. Try doing something actually stressful while sleep deprived.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• koheripbal 6y ago
  This reminds me of Steve Pavlina who successfully slept 2-3 hrs per day for 5.5 months and reported no ill effects. source: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ We definitely need more people to try variations on this. If you're in confinement, this is actually a great time to try.
  • jotm 6y ago
    I used to really like that guy... But I got a suspicion that sleep experiment may have been fabricated. There is zero proof beyond the blog posts :/
    • koheripbal 6y ago
      Seems lot a lot of effort for seemingly no return at the time. Without evidence to the contrary, I'm unwilling to doubt him.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • asdff 6y ago
        Plenty of return from oblivious user traffic. You see all the self help crock being peddled at the bottom of the page? This article is like chumming the water.
      • jotm 6y ago
        You're right, there doesn't seem to be much payoff for lying on that particular topic, especially at that time. Just my suspicion, nothing more.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tmaly 6y ago
  I have noticed if I go many days without sleeping, it is easier to make simple mistakes. Also, creativity seems to degrade.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jotm 6y ago
  I definitely couldn't do it. After about a week, my body would just crash/go to sleep by itself, world be damned. Same, or rather, worse, when working 12 hours a day for more than ~2 weeks. I just start thinking "what the fuck am I doing? Why is this worth it?", and if it's not worth it it would just drive me into a serious depressive mood. Maybe because I know I could do better than this, that there are other options. Maybe it's because I made peace with death already. But I think it's just that I'm physically not made for this kind of overload.
  • yovagoyu 6y ago
    Lack of sleep amplifies stress. That's why people argue more frequently and are more easily agitated when they're sleep deprived. A lot of the people who say this doesn't affect them seem to be bored video gamers with no career focus and no stress. I feel like they'd feel it too if they had to work 12 hours a day and had some moderate stress.
• abtom 6y ago
  > I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn’t find any effects on cognition (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT). Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
  • renjimen 6y ago
    So all my late nights playing video games as a teenager could've been justified had I only phrased it as "doing a PVT for cognitive studies"?!
    • loa_in_ 6y ago
      You would have to systematically write the circumstances and resulting observations down
• saadalem 6y ago
  Tesla sleep by taking 20 mins naps (they said that he sleep just 2/3 hours per day by taking naps) a la polyphasic way. He is compared to Da Vinci which also did the same thing, Edison who sleep 4/5 hours .. Does someone relate to polyphasic sleep ?
  • tasty_freeze 6y ago
    About 15 years ago I tried polyphasic sleeping for about two months. I was on a horrific work crunch and I threw myself into it. I believe my schedule was a 20 minute nap every 3 or 4 hours (I forget now), with one nap being two hours instead of 20 minutes, a total of about 4 hours a day. The first week was horrible, but then I got in the groove and I actually functioned and got work done. I'd often wake up a minute or two before the alarm went off. There were a lot of problems. If I ever found myself killing time, eg, waiting for a test to run, and not actively doing something, I'd want to crash badly. Sometimes I'd be in the zone working a bug in my code and my "time to take a nap" alarm would sound and I'd be tempted to keep working. I learned it was important to stick to the sleep cycle even if I was feeling alert. It was terrible for family life because if I had to, say, take the kids to the zoo on Saturday, I'd have to schedule it to fit my sleep pattern, and it wasn't always possible.
    • WildGreenLeave 6y ago
      I don't want to sound racist, but your last sentence is something that struck me as something oddly european/american. At least in Asia it is just normal to take a nap somewhere for 30 minutes or so. Just imagine what you could've achieved if napping wasn't a problem :-) I'm european but I really like the asian culture where napping is in general socially acceptable.
      • warranty 6y ago
        “Asia” isn’t one place. Only Japan has napping culture.
• retreatguru 6y ago
  Is it just me, but how can this be taken seriously when the author was trying to show no result. While I love self experimentation, publishing it as if it’s valid science is unfortunate.
  • texascloud 6y ago
    Agreed. It's dangerous. This is simply someone's personal experiment and their experiences written up. It's proof of nothing other than "I did something"
  • guzey 6y ago
    Yes, I believe that you should take this factor into account while reading my experiment. As I write: >Lack of effect on cognitive ability is surprising and may reflect true lack of cognitive impairment, my desire to demonstrate lack of cognitive impairment due to chronic sleep deprivation and lack of blinding biasing the measurements, lack of statistical power, and/or other factors.
• cercatrova 6y ago
  Incidentally, I've been sleeping polyphasically for some time now. Of course, there have been no real studies done on polyphasic sleep and it must be taken on anecdotal evidence alone. However, I don't feel any ill effects after a year. My schedule is tamer than others, however; the Everyman 2 consists of a 4.5 hour core sleep and two 20 minute naps [0]. Schedules like Uberman (six 20 minute naps equidistant in time, every 4 hours), Dymaxion, Tesla, and other nap-only sleeps do not seem to be stable, at least for most people who are not genetically mutated to sleep less [1]. There are quite some pros as well, such as more time for one; instantly falling asleep (got rid of my insomnia); removal of substances such as alcohol, marijuana, and caffeinated drinks like coffee; and lucid dreams with nearly every sleep. The latter is very useful for me as I can test out ideas in dreams and see how they could fare, a sort of omnipotent virtual reality. As I wrote in another comment, the fact that many think polyphasic sleep is only Uberman or other nap-based schedules with ~2 hour total sleep time is disappointing to see. There are other schedules on that site that are far tamer, such as Everyman 1: sleep 6 hours at night, one 20-min nap during the day, which you could do on a lunch break. There are whole gradations from 9 hours (two 4.5 hour sleeps, not necessarily reduction of total sleep time, but it gives better sleep for some) to Uberman or Tesla (~2 hour total sleep time), which by the way is not known to be stable over a longer time period, a fact that the polyphasic community willingly accepts. It is particularly disappointing to see because, as another commenter said, I'd like to see more research on sleep and perhaps synthesizing its effects into a compound, but if people dismiss these alternate sleep schedules, we may not fully understand what the brain is doing during sleep, as fewer researchers are incentivized to study it, thinking it's just BS, which hurts the field overall. I do wonder though if the main advantages of polyphasic sleep are that it enforces a more rigid structure than monophasic sleep; if you miss a nap, or you oversleep, you're done for. If one could enforce the same level of scheduling in monophasic sleep, I wonder if they wouldn't have the same advantage of increased time. It's too easy to make excuses with monophasic sleep however, saying that you'll just sleep after one more drink / turn of a game / line of code, so polyphasic sleep acts as an enforcer of such a schedule, and here is where its true strength lies. [0] https://polyphasic.net/schedules/everyman/ https://polyphasic.net/schedules/everyman/ [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-identified-people-who-need-little-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id...
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  What if I also sleep a couple of hours during the day (+4 during the night)?
• shaftway 6y ago
  I read about the Uberman sleep schedule stuff myself when I was younger and trying to recover time I "wasted" sleeping. I ended up trying Uberman myself (15 minute naps, 6x per day). I did a decent amount of prep work. I talked to my doctor (who basically said as long as I'm not falling asleep while driving, go for it). I set up ways to track my cognitive abilities around work (remote software engineer at the time). I started tracking kill-to-death ratio in favorite first person shooter (I thought it was a good measure of my innovation, as you can't use the same tricks for very long against human opponents). I also started tracking my weight, strength, endurance, and food intake. It was hard to get into the schedule, and it never really clicked and held. Eventually I found the schedule to be frustrating and difficult from a social perspective. So I ended up dropping it a little over a year after I started. So yeah, a little over a year. When I analyzed my numbers I didn't see any particular hits in any of the areas. Work stayed stable (I actually got promoted about 9 months in, so I'm fairly confident about that). My kill-to-death ratio in the FPS climbed steadily along a similar trajectory as it had before I started. I found I was eating more (from ~2300 calories per day to almost 3000 calories to day), but my weight stayed level. Strength and endurance went up slightly, but that's probably more because I was checking them regularly versus not doing any exercise leading up to it. Would I suggest it to others? No. There were other issues I had with the plan, more societal. And it was frustrating to not be able to focus on something for more than 3.5 hours at a time. But it certainly was an interesting time.
  • jkhdigital 6y ago
    Was adaptation to Uberman staggeringly difficult? I tried it multiple times, each time thinking I had come up with the perfect system to push through, and each time failing. On my final attempt I would go for bike rides to stay awake and would actually doze off for a few seconds at a time ("microsleeps") even while riding. I concluded that physiology determined whether or not something like Uberman is even possible for a given human being, and I don't have the right physiology. I have a close friend who tells me that he "doesn't get jet lag" and seems to have other resistance to circadian disruptions, so I've always thought that he would be perfect for Uberman but he's not interested so I can't really test my theory.
• deeblering4 6y ago
  I would approximate working with only 4 hours sleep to working with a post-hangover fuzzy head. Sure you could function like that, but doing so regularly isn’t healthy for you and has a cumulative negative effect on productivity/output.
• jkhdigital 6y ago
  > It seems that there’s very high variation in how people respond to sleep deprivation. There you go. It's the tyranny of averages: when variation between humans is greater than the effect of the intervention. This reminds me of reading The How of Happiness and learning that happiness is basically 50% genetics, 10% circumstances and 40% behavior. The author frames that 40% as a really big number, but I thought about it the other way around: if you're unlucky enough to be born into the bottom decile of genetic happiness, then you could do everything right and still be less happy than someone with really good happiness genes who does everything wrong. Some people get smashed by any lack of sleep, and some people (most notably short sleepers) are totally fine with as little as 4 hours a night. There is no advice that works for both kinds, and formulating advice based on averages is committing a grave fallacy. I suppose the world of health research is plagued by this erroneous assumption that humans are more or less the same. In some ways sure, but in many ways we are profoundly different.
  • kharak 6y ago
    > I suppose the world of health research is plagued by this erroneous assumption that humans are more or less the same. In some ways sure, but in many ways we are profoundly different. Sidenote: I came to the conclusion, that this is the crux of all generalizations when it comes to humans. Not all policies will be good for all people. The ideal country might be very different for you and me. Also our diets, the way we build relationships, how we should train our bodies or what constitutes moral lives.
  • trebidor 6y ago
    Research in general pretty much has to work this way. You're trying to identify "laws" or rules that govern reality. Outliers are interesting, but in general we expect to find many instances of some phenomenon—which means that by default we're looking for cause-and-effect relationships that apply in "most cases." It's also worth mentioning that it's very easy for people to convince themselves that they're special or different when they actually aren't. Our own psychology is very unreliable. So while your point is well taken, people should also not assume they're the exception to the rule, even if they might be.
• ping_pong 6y ago
  I discovered that about 1/3 of people can be sleep deprived without any ill effects, which is the bucket I fall in. Another 1/3 will be disgruntled but can function at a lower level, but for the last 1/3, it's catastrophic and can't function at all. That's my wife, and what exemplified this the most was after having kids. She was almost immediately a wreck but I was able to hold together with the lack of sleep and spent most of the time being the caregiver for our kids during the toughest parts of the night. Previous, I had another incident of sleep where I got 4-5 hours of sleep a day for about a year, and then it all came crashing down on me eventually. About 10 years ago, I was doing algorithmic trading globally and would sometimes watch my trades until 1-2am, and then wake up at 6am to be ready for US trading. I was doing fine with no problems from lack of sleep, and then one day after about a year I stopped being able to think clearly. I was having real trouble thinking or learning new things and had a bad headache. I went to my doctor and she immediately scheduled an MRI because she thought I might have a brain tumor. I was scared shitless, but I was able to get the MRI the next day. After the results came back negative for brain tumor, I thought maybe it's sleep, so I left work in the middle of the day and fell asleep and slept for about 16 hours. I realized right there and then I was sleep deprived, so I stopped trading immediately and focused on trying to sleep properly. These days I need close to 7.5 hrs of sleep a day and if I get less, I'll feel it pretty quickly as opposed to 10 years ago when I felt nothing.
  • mattlondon 6y ago
    Almost exactly the same experience here with me Vs my wife with children. She needs at least one or two significant maps and an early bedtime or she simply just cannot function, but I seem to be able to handle it a bit better. I wonder if it is a gender thing, or a coincidence?
    • ping_pong 6y ago
      I don't think sex matters, it's simply how someone is wired.
    • globular-toast 6y ago
      I have read studies that say men benefit more from micro-napping and therefore can handle shorter nights as long as they can micro-nap. I sleep significantly shorter nights than my girlfriend. She can sleep for 10-12 hours every night. I only sleep for 7-8 which means I go to sleep 2-3 hours after her. But I do micro-nap sometimes. If she naps it's for a long time, usually because of lack of sleep the night before. She is younger than me, and when I was younger I used to want to sleep for 10 hours or more, but when I did it messed up my sleeping pattern (gave me a >24 hour rhythm). So I'm inclined to think she really does need more sleep at night than me.
• mattlondon 6y ago
  Having recently had a baby, 4 hours of presumably uninterrupted sleep per night is an absolutely amazing prospect! Luxury! What I noticed was it was not so much a lack of sleep, but how the sleep is interrupted that was the killer. After a few days of barely sleeping longer than 30 mins at a time I found that memory was hugely impacted, and even trivial mental arithmetic required concentration. I suspect this is to do with not being able to get into the appropriate "deep sleep" cycles or something-something-REM sleep? If you are up for it, please try the experiment again with 4 hours of sleep randomly broken up into 10-60 minute chunks (random variability is important - i.e you go to sleep not knowing how long you've got) distributed throughout the day, with a minimum of 60 minutes between each chunk. Enjoy :)
  • rdgthree 6y ago
    I think this is the interesting question. I'm an extremely deep sleeper and almost nothing wakes me up while I'm sleeping, but I've found that I naturally sleep significantly longer if my bedroom has too much light or there's a significant amount of noise around me while I'm asleep. So despite not actually waking up consciously, I think I sometimes end up in this partial wake state where I'm not getting proper REM sleep and as a result, not actually getting the rest I need. It wouldn't surprise me if this is often the case for people who feel they need more sleep. Having proper blackout shades and full silence (via ear plugs or otherwise) during sleep allows me to sleep a significantly shorter period of time as measured by however long I end up staying asleep. I typically don't use an alarm, so it's fascinating to be able to notice that natural difference in how long my body seems to need before booting back up. Interesting anecdote - the pandemic is what triggered my awareness of this effect. When I'm at home alone sleeping (typically into the late morning, I'm a night owl), my dog will sleep with me. When my girlfriend started working from home from early in the morning, he would wake up with her and bark loudly at the occasional activity outside. I suddenly couldn't wake up on my normal schedule, even though I wasn't actually consciously woken up by the barking. The thought occurred to me that it could still be the barking and something related to the depth of the sleep, so I tried ear plugs + having my girlfriend close the bedroom door. Suddenly I was back to sleeping normal hours. Years of strange sleeping pattern problems were explained in an instant.
• swayvil 6y ago
  Speaking of declining cognition, I just spent 4 hours wearing a mask at work. Wow! I'm woozy, dizzy, muddleheaded and really cranky. Definitely not at my sharpest. Definitely not in the right frame of mind to be using power-tools.
• diziet 6y ago
  It would be interesting to see resting heart-rate plotted vs this as well -- from my observations lack of sleep tends to impact that a lot.
• ppezaris 6y ago
  About 20 years ago I slept an average of three hours a night for three years straight. No ill effects that I could discern. Just another anecdote; not suggesting that the plural of anecdote is data.
  • guzey 6y ago
    Why did you stop?
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Hours of sleep may not necessarily reflect how well rested a person is. There are levels of sleep: NREM ("quiet sleep") and REM ("active sleep"). NREM has 3 stages: 1 (almost awake), 2 (light sleep), 3 (deep sleep). The deeper your sleep, the most rested you will be. Some people require fewer hours of sleep because they spend more time in deep sleep.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• meristem 6y ago
  Experiment with n=1: proves subject did not seem impaired during this one stint when he knew he was being measured, and chose the measures himself, and had control over the situation and experiment.
• otterpro 6y ago
  If you are doing any sleep-deprivation experiment on self, only thing I ask of you is to not get behind the wheel and drive. I beg you please not to do any driving, even if you feel alert and not tired. I had a friend's teen who blacked out while driving after not sleeping much in 24 hours, causing a minor accident on the freeway. Falling asleep behind the wheel is most common, especially around 2-3pm, when the effect of sleep deprivation really starts to kick in, and brain decides to sleep without a warning.
• nickbauman 6y ago
  The 12-14 days is crucial here, I think: The US Army tested battle readiness and effectiveness off and on since WWII and found that you can keep a unit working well for a couple of weeks with about 4.5 hours a night. After that, they start to have serious problems. Less than 4.5 hours a night and the problems start a lot sooner.
  • yovagoyu 6y ago
    Do you have a link to this study? Seems like an experiment actually worth reading about.
    • nickbauman 6y ago
      there are literally dozens of them out there
• riazrizvi 6y ago
  I find the cognitive tests in the experiment to be insufficient, to make the argument that practical cognition did not suffer and that the experimenter was 'productive for 16 hours'. The experiment uses two computer games and a 3 hr test, not much of a comparison to all day non-stop creative software development. The SAT is one neat little question after another, every challenge carefully crafted and nicely wrapped. Time to completion is always relatively easy to calculate. Creative coding requires a level of alertness that I find is most similar to a chess game. A working day is around 8 hours. A 3 hour assignment feels like a half-day. I wonder how many hours the author could play chess against a good opponent, on 4 hours of sleep a night? I doubt it approaches '16 productive hours'...
  • guzey 6y ago
    I don't know about chess but I coded a lot during the experiment (on day 7 I spent 11 hours coding, starting with a big block between 8am and 2pm) and felt great.
    • riazrizvi 6y ago
      Hmm, might give it a try then. I was once sleep deprived for about a year in an old job, and I remember it being so painful I was really turned off to it. But perhaps it bears a second look. Thanks.
• cco 6y ago
  This should contain a big fat caveat, this appears to be a very young person, maybe early 20's based on photos? My friend group could pull all nighters and 3-4 am weeknights playing beer pong just fine in college. When we have done so sparingly in our 30's the next day is completely shot so far as productivity, we can operate but at greatly diminished capacity. I'd love to see the author try again in 10 years, I love comparing my current physical ability, e.g. number of push ups, chin ups etc, to where I was years ago, its a fun thing to see your body change over time.
  • guzey 6y ago
    >This should contain a big fat caveat, this appears to be a very young person, maybe early 20's based on photos? The second sentence of the abstract: >I’m a 22-year-old male and normally I sleep 7-8 hours.
• yovagoyu 6y ago
  When I was younger, I somewhat involuntarily got 4 hours of sleep a night for about 2-3 months. I remember the first month was fine, but by the second month I'd started to hallucinate in the day time. The reason this happened was that I took a night job suddenly (midnight til 8am, but sometimes as late as noon because the overtime was good). I couldn't get used to the schedule and seem to get more than four hours of sleep during daylight. The job was a truck driving job, delivering huge pallets of newspapers out in time for the paperboys/girls at 5am-7am across a few cities from the printing press. I remember it was a sweet job, relatively high pay compared to what I'd had recently and very low stress since the factory was empty, you grab the clipboard with your route, forklift the pallets onto the truck and listen to music the rest of the night. I started to get extremely tired while driving sometime in the second month. I fought it hard and would stare straight ahead jerking myself awake every couple of minutes eventually. Not long after that the lines in the road would insidiously become snakes and I'd be following a river in a half dream sort of zone. By the end of the second month I knew I had to quit or I'd end up getting myself killed on the road, no matter how good the job was. I forced myself to stay on the extra two weeks because two weeks notice is something my parents instilled upon me that you always have to do. I kind of agree but feel like I should have made an exception then. I was probably 20 at the time. Some points I'd like to raise: 1. I don't believe two weeks is long enough to feel anything. Particularly not if you're young. 2. Loss of cognition is really really obvious if you're operating a large metal box that can kill you. The ability to play video games seems like it could easily fool you into thinking you're coherent. 3. Lack of sleep amplifies stress. If you don't have much stress, it's going to be way easier. Someone falling behind on their loan payments, working overtime, and taking care of dependents would likely see a much bigger effect on their life, even with smaller margins of sleep lost.
• bhouston 6y ago
  I find I think different when I don't have enough sleep and I come up with ideas I normally wouldn't. It is sort of useful actually.
• mmmBacon 6y ago
  >> Subjectively, I felt that I gained somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of productive time every day. >> I found that I was able to go from “falling asleep” to “fully alert” at all times by playing video games for 15-20 minutes. I ended up playing video games for approximately 30-90 minutes a day Does this mean the actual amount of time gained from this was 2-3 hours or do we subtract out the amount of time spent playing video games? If we subtract out the video games there is not much benefit to being sleep deprived, sometimes only 30 additional productive minutes are gained.
  • guzey 6y ago
    Actual amount of time.
• dhanna 6y ago
  The tasks he's chosen is uninteresting at best. Did he attempt to learn anything new while sleep-deprived?
  • guzey 6y ago
    I spent the majority of my time coding (learning a lot of JS) and learning biology during the experiment.
• KboPAacDA3 6y ago
  Submarine crews have been working with these cycles for a century.
• burlesona 6y ago
  I have come to the (non-scientific) conclusion that this is probably genetic. I know some people who sleep a lot less than me and seem to be fine with that. I am not fine with less sleep, but I wish I was because I would love to have the extra hours each day. I thought of this for the first time when listening to a Freakonomics podcast series interviewing major company CEOs. Several of them mentioned schedules where they average 3-5 hours sleep per night, forever. They all seemed to think that was fine. I think I would be severely ill, maybe even literally die, if I averaged 3-5 hours sleep for a duration of many months. When listening to that series it hit me, maybe this is a genetic thing. In the same way that you kind of need to be tall to make it into the NBA, maybe you need the "minimal sleep is okay" gene to make it as a CEO or rocketship founder. People with those genes get anywhere from 10-20 hours more time per work week than I do, and that's a big advantage over one week, let alone compounded over a career. I don't know what the research says about this, but my lived experience makes me think it's pretty likely, and unfortunately that also means I may have to be more realistic about what my body is and is not capable of.
  • cercatrova 6y ago
    Yes, genetic factors are possible. For example, last year a new gene interaction was discovered for people who need less sleep: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-identified-people-who-need-little-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id...
  • meddlepal 6y ago
    I think it's more likely some people can just power through lack of sleep. I've recently started trying to sleep more 6-7+ hours after a decade of doing the 3-5 hours thing. I just feel better now with more sleep and while I certainly could perform at a high level with less sleep I had to exert more energy the longer the day went on to stay focused. Genetic? Maybe, or just really good discipline and work ethic?
    • oliveshell 6y ago
      Well, yes, but this is a bit of a false dichotomy. It’s obvious that capacity for discipline and work ethic are not entirely independent of genetic factors.
• jl2718 6y ago
  My first tour in Afghanistan I started at 3 hours and couldn’t keep that up after a month or two so I went to four hours for most of the year. It was crazy but very structured and focused so it worked. I couldn’t do this in the civilian world; it’s too complicated to deal with relationships and looking after yourself and big life decisions and existential questions and everything else. Exhausting. I’ll take 10 if I can get it. I go back to this schedule when camping and feel great.
• 1bc29b36f623ba8 6y ago
  I sleep for 4-5 hours, get up for about an hour or so, and then try to sleep another 3-4 hours. Previously, I'd wake up after 4-5 hours and spend 2-3 hours trying to fall asleep again. An hour of activity during the night seem to be much more efficient as I get more sleep in total, and obviously feel rested afterwards. Occasionally, I've stayed up, and while I've usually felt quite well for several hours without noticeable decreases in my cognitive abilities, I've been completely exhausted by lunchtime instead. Perhaps it is an age thing?
• charles_f 6y ago
  Interesting, I tend to agree about the cognitive capacity, but raters than focus (as many others here seem to have a problem with under sleep deprivation), I find that the biggest challenge for me is motivation. Any task that is inherently rewarding (coding fun stuff, games,...) is no problem. Anything remotely boring, or just challenging, I just don't find it in me. If push comes to shove I'll do it, but if I'm allowed to procrastinate I will
• brewdad 6y ago
  I find it concerning how many people in this thread immediately jump from believing Why We Sleep is truthful to the book is complete bullshit because guzey says so. Indeed, some good points are raised by him but at the end of the day he's just another fucking guy with a blog. The entire field deserves more study but the responses on here feel like Grandma on Facebook passing on something she read because it feels right.
• peterburkimsher 6y ago
  12-14 days sounds like just enough time to finish taking exams, and my study/sleep schedule was rather like his during some periods in university. Sleep deprivation can lead to me being more creative, particularly with abstract concepts like free will and subatomic physics. I wouldn't want to do it long-term though.
• makach 6y ago
  I find the title misleading. The post should add “for me” at the end of the title, or “for me as a young healthy male”. This is a personal experience written up as a blog post.
• smeeth 6y ago
  I’m a simple man, I see an N=1 experiment, I ignore it.
• jbverschoor 6y ago
  Programming does not need too much cognitive ability.
• bsimpson 6y ago
  I spent one of the hottest summers on record couchsurfing around Europe. The heat and the casual accommodations both truncated my sleep significantly. I thought I'd cool off by going mountain biking in the Alps. I didn't realize how tired I was until I got to the top of the lift. It was fucking terrifying! Doing regular vacation stuff like eating and talking to people was totally fine - I hadn't even noticed I'd accumulated a sleep deficit. But the attention and the quick reflexes extreme sports require are another matter entirely.
  • Jnr 6y ago
    Don't you think it could have happened because of lack of oxygen in high altitude?
• toyg 6y ago
  This is one of those posts I wish I could downvote 1000 times. It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts. You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.
  • leonroy 6y ago
    I think you're doing a disservice to the author's pretty in-depth self-study. The author even states at the beginning of their article: > I believe that this experiment provides strong evidence that I experienced no major cognitive impairment (emphasis mine) > I’m wary of generalizing my results to other people and welcome independent replications of this experiment.
  • guzey 6y ago
    I'm the author of this study. >It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts. >You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks. I like this comment because its author can't decide whether my study is the "equivalent of fake news" or whether its results are obviously true.
    • toyg 6y ago
      You are clearly unfamiliar with the process of mass-producing fake news. It typically takes “common sense” and proceeds to mislead it through bad paths. Which is exactly what you do with this “study”: you over-analyze a situation that is relatively obvious, with a sample of 1, and simply by doing so you effectively suggest to generalize its results - which is wrong. You dropping a caveat mid-page in a single sentence is also the same thing tabloids do: make a big title about something, then state the opposite somewhere in the actual small-print article.
      • guzey 6y ago
• qu4ku 6y ago
  This may be anecdotal [and sleep deprivation may impact different people differently] but it has a huge impact on me. I used to use memrise [flash card style memorisation] to learn new words/concepts for years [25minutes, the first thing after waking up, every single day] and I know from experience how sleep, food, hangover, etc. impact my performance. Sleep has a gigantic impact on my memory, focus and creativity — I believe it is responsible for really high variation in IQ points [10 - 20, but that's my rough guesstimate]. This is a more qualitative assessment but whey I sleep 4 hours it resembles a high level of depression — I lose motivation and all of my natural curiosity is gone [eg. usually, reading/learning brings me happiness, but it's all gone when I'm sleep deprived]. That's why I haven't used an alarm clock for years now.
  • kyuudou 6y ago
    I have similar results and opinions. I feel that there is some kind of "back-end processing" that happens during sleep that is crucial for learning. Also, my sleep tends to be better when I'm doing some kind of workout regularly, although I need to sleep more. If I'm not working out, I can get by easily with 6 hours but if I am, absolutely need 8 hrs min. Makes sense to me since a lot of repair, healing and growth occur while sleeping.
• PlasticTank 6y ago
  I believe sleep to be one of the most underrated and underutilized health strategies, I know so many who diet and do all sorts but then are proud of the fact they only sleep 6 hours a night. Study after study shows how incredibly deterementail even a slight lack of sleep can be, so much so that I usually don't believe I've read them correctly to begin with. I would suggest this book to anyone interested in the topic: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker The author was on Joe Rogan at some point too but I haven't listened to it.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  Like many a geek I've "experimented" with my sleeping patterns both intentionally and unintentionally. I used to drift out of sync with my own time zone until I was completely nocturnal and would regularly change phase by staying awake for more than 24 hours. I found this quite hard and while my cognitive ability might not have suffered, I found that I could think about nothing but sleep past the 24 hour mark. At the 16-20 hour mark I've done some of my best ever work. Going several days with little sleep has always been easier. A single short night of only 3 hours is almost unnoticed. A second short night becomes difficult. But I've also noticed my cognitive ability isn't really impacted. However, my physical performance is degraded heavily. I'm far weaker, clumsier and my fine motor control is completely shot. I also become really irritable and just generally not pleasant to be around. Nowadays I maintain a regular circadian rhythm. I get up at the same time every day, even on weekends. I try to go to sleep at the right time, but do sometimes get carried away with something I'm doing. But more importantly, I try to make sure my sleep quality is high. That means the room at the correct temperature (as far as I can manage), minimal light and noise pollution (I moved house specifically for this), and no drugs (it's one reason I stopped using alcohol). I find that everything is better. I'm stronger, have better endurance, I'm funnier and more sociable, sex is better, my work is better. Everything is better.
• shoulderfake 6y ago
  This completely contradicts my experience with reduced sleep. If I sleep 6 hrs instead of my usual 8.5 I'm good for nothing that day. I can code for half a day maybe but thats it. My workouts are also severely affected in terms of max intensity.
• TinkersW 6y ago
  I'm totally baffled by people claiming to be able to function with less than 8 hours of sleep. Even 1 night of 6 hours is enough to reduce my mental capabilities immensely. It is like a fog closes on my mind. Memory suffers particularly, have much greater difficulty recalling words for things/people(and if the sleep loss is severe it can become impossible), and any code I write in this state is subpar when I look at it later. Additionally it often takes me exponentially longer to write the code when tired.. Also recovery from sleep deprivation requires extra sleep for me. If I follow up a night of 6 hours with a night of 8 hours, I still feel like I only had 6 hours, requiring me to sleep extra until the 'fog' goes away. And age has nothing to do with it, had the same problem as teen.
• sebow 6y ago
  This is highly subjective and depends from person to person.Da vinci for example had an absolutely insane schedule(something like working 4 hours, sleeping for half an hour and repeat). For stronger, more "effective" sleep hours, exercise is needed ,alongside good oxygen and adequate temperature.This is almost a fact and other factors like caffeine(which slow your brain when you're not consuming it) must be considered. All in all, i think most people forget to "debug" themselves and the needs of their bodies by being pressured by time & career. On the long term, taking care of your body is probably more beneficiary than having a project delivered on time.
• ChefboyOG 6y ago
  YMMV, but I've found anecdotally, that qualitative aspects of my sleep have an outsized impact vs. the # of hours, to a point of course. For instance, in my teens/early twenties, I (like many) was able to sleep quite a bit less. Lots of late nights traipsing around the internet, lots of midnight projects. In my mid-twenties, I suddenly found that I needed much more sleep. If I didn't get at least 8 hours, I woke up completely drained. Other adults I spoke to confirmed that this was normal. Then, I switched apartments and got a new bed. Suddenly, I was waking up much easier, even with few hours of sleep. This pattern has repeated a few times throughout my life. I'll notice I'm waking up more tired than usual, and then something will change—a new room with more natural light, a better mattress, the loss of something I didn't realize was stressing me—and I'll suddenly need less sleep. I'm sure none of this is shocking to anyone, but the key thing for me was that even when my sleep quality was apparently deteriorated, I didn't notice it. I still fell asleep easily, I still had dreams, I was still comfortable in my bed, etc. The sleep cycle, it seems, just wasn't as restorative due to other factors. I have a little pet theory that some of the "Super CEOs" we hear about who get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night are: 1. Slightly exaggerating the rigidity of their superhuman schedule (I used to work in media, and I've worked with an outsized number of people who have public reputations for this kind of stuff. Anecdotally, I've found that nearly all exaggerate and sometimes outright lie.) 2. Adept at compartmentalizing stress and environment, to the extent that they're able to get quality sleep regardless. This skill would naturally track other responsibilities in their life as well.