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Sleep quality and consistency associated with better academic performance (2019)
- wallopingfuture 5y agoSleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students
- o10449366 5y agoSpeaking as someone who is actually diagnosed with chronic insomnia and delayed sleep phase disorder, college sucked because my lack of sleep would affect my focus and concentration and that would kill me on exams where a sloppy mistake (circling the wrong answer) or running out of town would drop my grade significantly even if I fully understood the material. I performed much better on homework assignments where there was less time pressure because I could work on them around my irregular sleep schedule. I'm grateful now for working as a programmer because it affords me the same luxury - with my condition I simply can't exist in a 9-5 society. (Before people comment, yes I have tried melatonin and no, recreational drugs don't help me sleep either)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pure_simplicity 5y agoHave you considered some form of light therapy ? (Very bright lights in the morning, no artificial light in the evening) I hope there's something out there to help you. Not for the sake of conformity to society, but just for the benefits of high quality sleep.
- Maxburn 5y agoIn the middle of my life I am grateful that I've finally worked out a decent sleep system. It took a lot more than people realize but diet, exercise, regular schedule, stress management, and bedroom environment all played sometimes surprisingly important factors. Worst part is it's going to be different for everyone, but IMO totally worth the potential years to figure it out. Only advice I can offer is to use the scientific method, keep everything as static as possible and change one thing at a time but to get a real impression of that one thing changing it might take a couple weeks.
- caskstrength 5y agoCan you give more details? In such discussions there are always a lot of people who struggle with this but very few who actually succeeded in fixing their sleep.
- Maxburn 5y agoI think personally diet and exercise made the biggest impact. A diet that works for your body not your ideology, lots of real experimentation needed here and stop ignoring how you feel. For me getting off of carbs and doing light keto seems to be what my body wants. Mix in some light exercise. Nothing crazy here, with all the health tracking available these days just aim for the minimums shown there. Doesn't have to be every day, just shoot for the majority of the week. You might be shocked at how improving these two makes a difference. Do not take these to extremes, just aim for a better baseline than what you are doing now. Also I'm speaking as an american here, and I was especially bad in these two areas. YMMV.
- caskstrength 5y agoThanks for sharing. Never thought that carbs could significantly impact sleep quality.
- clydethefrog 5y agoFor me it mostly helps avoiding any food, and specifically carbs, a few hours before going to sleep. I guess otherwise the body wants to stay more awake to digest the food.
- Maxburn 5y agoVery true, once I got adapted to carb free I generally don't eat dinner now. A small snack if I want but nothing heavy really helps sleep quite a bit.
- caskstrength 5y ago
- bserge 5y ago
- qwerty456127 5y agoThe more sleep-deprived I am - the worse my working memory feels to work, nevertheless the more productive I am. A sleepless night gives highly elevated productivity during the next day. I feel boost of attention capacity, inspiration and creativity. It even gets easier to do mental math. Obviously a sleepless night also causes some physical discomfort but 500 mg of L-tyrosine cures it (and itself also gives some extra boost). I also used to practice taking a nap every time I come home from the office but such an evening nap always (since my early childhood) makes my mood horrible (grouchy, unenthusiastic and asexual) for hours to come.
- wallopingfuture 5y agoFunny you mention L-tyrosine, it "Tyrosine promotes cognitive flexibility" - Source: https://www.grelin.net/post/ztwmC7c43thoriuAFVaC https://www.grelin.net/post/ztwmC7c43thoriuAFVaC
- qwerty456127 5y agoAs far as I know it's a standard medicine to treat sleep-deprived patients when insomnia treatment is not [yet] successful.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy
- pure_simplicity 5y agoI have experienced that too and I wonder why that is...
- qwerty456127 5y agoSo do I - that's why I share. Perhaps somebody may have an idea.
- Jensson 5y ago
- inglor_cz 5y agoI recently dropped caffeine. For about 3 weeks, I have been drinking decaffeinated tea and coffee only. Fortunately I wasn't dependent on caffeine. I like the taste of those two beverages, but my body does not crave caffeine. The effect on sleep is very notable. I wake up spontaneously between 6 and 7 am, even though it is dark in January in CZ and we have massive exterior blinds in our bedroom which make it completely dark. And I feel very fine and productive throughout the day. I tried melatonin before, it sort-of works, but the effect of dropping caffeine seems to be much stronger.
- diatone 5y agoThe results are interesting. It seems like there is a lot of clustering going on in the regression data. It could be worth investigating if instead of a linear relationship between sleep quality and consistency with academic performance, there is a logarithmic (or some other superlinear) relationship instead. This would help confirm the intuitive notion that there are diminishing returns to optimising one's sleep.
- contravariant 5y agoYou'll want to have a stronger link before you can worry about what kind of relation it is exactly. And if you ignore the people with scores <60% you lose most of the correlation entirely, which to me suggest there's something causing both bad sleep and bad academic performance rather than there being some continuous relation. In fact the distribution looks bimodal which suggests there's something splitting the population in 2.
- alisonkisk 5y agoBinodality appears in feedback loops: bad sleep makes good sleep harder to get.
- janandonly 5y agoNo shit, Sherlock. But seriously, as a society as a whole, we undervalue sleep. By using an app [1] I've noticed that i sleep less than i thought i did. The thing is, i might be in bed 8,5 hours, but i only fall asleep after an hour or so, and also, i seem to wake up during the night. No wonder my academic performance is lacking... [1] https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/sleep-cycle-sleep-tracker/id320606217 https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/sleep-cycle-sleep-tracker/id32...
- Tenoke 5y agoThere's no reason to think that 7-730 hours is so little for you that it's hurting your performance if it's just based on those measures. Don't give yourself sleep anxiety over pointless chasing of 9 hours sleep.
- bloqs 5y agoWaking up at exactly the same time every day, so zero sleeping in on holidays And Eating a large protein/fat based breakfast with as few carbs as possible as soon as you get up regardless of being a "breakfast person" or not Have, together, completely transformed my capabilities as a human being.
- bennysomething 5y agoNot eating breakfast all, I've found this really helps me be alert. If I avoid lunch too I'm also less tired
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago"Eating a large protein/fat based breakfast with as few carbs as possible as soon as you get up regardless of being a "breakfast person" or not" As much as this might have helped you, this advice isn't going to work for everyone. Breakfast being the most important meal of the day was an advertising slogan, after all, and it isn't like dieticians are going to try to convince someone to eat breakfast if they are generally healthy. For me, your advice means that I eat more during the day. I'm most hungry in the evening, so that's when I eat more.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
- Flankk 5y agoI have the exact same experience with a rigid sleep schedule and large breakfast. It's a big deal. I don't even need coffee anymore.
- globular-toast 5y agoThere might have been some truth to the importance of breakfast, but it's completely outdated advice for most people. People are sitting down for 90% of their lives, with the occasional slow walk to the coffee machine or car, but eating like they're working in the fields for 10 hours every day.
- sovietmudkipz 5y agoI want a better sleep schedule but not bad enough to put it into practice. My day is full of stuff, and when my wife goes to sleep is when I feel like it's finally quiet enough to get some programming done. Or do whatever I want. My sleep cycle is that I go 4 days until I have to take a longer sleep (10 hours) and the rest of the time I operate on 6-7 hours of sleep. I usually wake up at 7-7:30 and I usually go to bed at 12-1 or 9-10 on my long sleep days. It's inconsistent and I worry about that fact. The biggest blocker for me is my time alone and distraction free. I like and want distractions to be gone when I work on personal projects. Early morning doesn't get me that as my wife wakes up at 5:15 (maybe if I woke up at 4?). If she's up and I'm up there are interactions which is great. And then there's text messages from friends and family and work chat all day. I can mute both and do but it's there, beckoning me for my attention. To take my focus... Look I know what the answer is for me. I need to replace work time with project time. My life would be in more balance if I had my 9-5 chunk of time where I do what I like doing (vs work stuff) so I don't feel like I'm living 3 lives in a single day. That implies my personal projects make enough money to have a family on. Not true now so the grind continues.
- adflux 5y agoMaybe consider working 32hours and project on friday?
- the_af 5y ago> when my wife goes to sleep is when I feel like it's finally quiet enough to get some programming done I tend to do this when I want to work on my hobbies, but then the relationship with my wife suffers. We enjoy going to bed together, it's part of the ritual of being a couple. I tried going to bed, then after she falls asleep getting up, but by then I'm too sleepy myself.
- sovietmudkipz 5y agoThat's also a dimension. I feel bad that she goes to bed alone when I stay up. We say good night and it's nice but then I leave to stay up. It feels off balance from my perspective, although she is used to it and has adapted.
- Cenk 5y agoLink to paper: https://oa.mg/paper?doi=10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z https://oa.mg/paper?doi=10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z
- VoodooJuJu 5y agoI've felt this. For me, the most important factor for good sleep is going to bed and waking the same time every day. If I have one late night that causes me to sleep in the next day, it'll take up to a week for me to recover my normal routine.
- troydavis 5y agoThe URL should be changed to the actual post: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-019-0055-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-019-0055-z
- someelephant 5y agolower anxiety => higher sleep quality => higher academic performance poverty => higher anxiety => lower life performance higher instagram use => lower baseline dopamine => higher anxiety => lower life performance
- tinyhouse 5y agoI agree. Anxiety has a huge impact on sleep. A lot of sleep experts focus on sleep hygiene which is important but not very helpful when anxiety is the main cause for the sleep problems. Sometimes people are not even aware of the problem cause anxiety can trickle in very subtly.
- ryannevius 5y agoSomething that has been revolutionary for me has been to set a _bed time_ alarm, instead of (or in addition to) a morning alarm.
- maccard 5y agoIt's not bed time for me, it's wind down time. I can reliably get into bed for 11:30 every night, but how quickly I fall asleep depends on what I was doing at 10:30
- woliveirajr 5y agoI couldn't find where they relate at what time those exams / grades were given. Sleep early -> wake up early -> have higher grades when exams are done in the morming? If you're a night owl, probably you'd grade better at night...
- Little_Fish 5y agoVery interesting. I believe there is also the concept of sleep hygiene (nope - not a shower!) which involves creating a bedroom environment and routine to ensure consistent, uninterrupted sleep. A good night's sleep isn't just good for your mental health and productivity, it's also a good healer for your body.
- r2_pilot 5y agoFor all the discussion on the forums here, I control-f 'ed and didn't see a single mention of sleep apnea. It's very common in men, even more so as time goes on. If you have a family history of it or snore loudly, it may be worth seeing a sleep specialist.
- kovek 5y agoI like to mention Mouth Taping since so few people know about it. Keeping the mouth closed at night helps with a few issues. This idea is unpolular (unlike CPAP, for example), but it can help, do check it out
- Sahilchopramd 5y agoThis article stimulated an interesting discussion. Sleep problems are very fixable/treatable. Improving sleep starts with objective good quality sleep data- a sleep test. FDA grade multi night sleep test give us great insight into sleep to rule out sleep disorders (over 80% of people are usually not aware). Using data from a sleep test allows clinicians to guide us on what would be the most effective intervention to improve sleep. I work at empowersleep.com; it’s a digital sleep health platform. Not selling here but, I see so many people suffering I felt obligated to share there are solutions and guidance to better sleep. Just for context, I’m a board certified Harvard trained sleep doctor. We’ve helped thousands of people improve their sleep.
- chromanoid 5y agoCreative insomnia is probably not an anti-thesis to the research, but I wonder how this relates to each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_creativity#Creative_insomnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_creativity#Creative_...
- topkai22 5y agoA) This is probably casual, because sleep is good B) The most interesting part is that sleep the night before exams wasn’t associated with any change to grades. This actually suggests to me that sleep in and of itself is less casual and more correlated to general lifestyle choices. I recall my college freshman year in particular to be full of temptations and distractions.
- jvanderbot 5y agoMy take is that sleep the night before doesn't help you a whole bunch, or not nearly as much as sleep while you are learning the material. (i.e., consistent, quality sleep leading up to exams).
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoIt could still be correlative; 'lifestyle choices' are basically the definition of correlation not causation. Or were you being sarcastic? For another (probably unhelpful) anecdote, got great grades in my senior year of college when I had a scholarship. One semester in my junior year I took 18 credits and also worked 32 hours a week through a 45-minute-one-way commute...I got very little sleep and my grades suffered for it. The primary things I learned that year were (1) don't over-commit yourself, (2) make a schedule and stick to it if you need to get the bare minimum done and don't have time to do everything, (3) you don't actually have to attend every lecture or turn in/complete every assignment to pass a class, (4) long commutes suck, and (5) a little bit of VHDL syntax stuck around was about the only thing I learned in those classes. My bad grades were not caused by poor sleep, poor sleep was a side effect of a larger issue (namely, the perpetual problem of money).
- tennis_sort 5y agoI stayed briefly in a real dive in NY one time while I was studying there. The room was used to dry clothes or something. I literally couldn't focus on anything in College. It was like I was perpetually hungover everyday. Also I wasn't great at self care when I was younger, first thing I'm going to teach my kids.
- blueyes 5y agoI highly recommend Andrew Huberman's podcast and especially its sleep episodes for anyone interested in understanding sleep and turning the knobs to improve it: https://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+huberman+sleep+podcast&client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=AOaemvKWAMa6299A4C-Uyep4cPek03lO0w%3A1643214898650&ei=MnjxYf-NJ5vGkPIPqe2twAE&ved=0ahUKEwj_7srC7M_1AhUbI0QIHal2CxgQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=andrew+huberman+sleep+podcast&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsANKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQAFgAYNUGaAFwAngAgAEAiAEAkgEAmAEAyAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz https://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+huberman+sleep+podcas...
- tombert 5y agoI think I have anecdotal evidence of the corollary on this: poor sleep quality leads to not-good academic performance. When I was 20, I had an almost Fight-Club level of insomnia, where I would go multiple days at a time without sleeping, not for lack of trying. I would quit caffeine, bike multiple miles a day, try eating healthy, eventually getting a prescription for ambien which had so-so results but for a period of about 4-5 months I got the worst sleep of my life. My already-mediocre college performance took a steep nosedive, leading me to eventually drop out. It was hard for me to justify to myself going to class when I was, at some level, in physical pain. Fortunately, I haven't had anywhere near that level of insomnia in 11 years, so the only thing I can think of was that it was the final throws of puberty.
- djohnston 5y agoI would give a lot for a drug or machine that could improve my sleep quality. A lot.
- radu_floricica 5y agoSleep is important, but this article is kinda useless in itself. First, yes, sure, of course sleep matters. But also it's measuring association, not causation. It's easy to think of reasons it works in reverse: of course people with good grades sleep better, they don't worry about having poor grades. And it's even saying that " Sleep measures accounted for nearly 25% of the variance in academic performance". That's causation language, and I don't think they determined that.
- tpoacher 5y agoBad sleep quality associated with an increased risk of starting to drink coffee! Rejections at bars associated with an increased risk of ugliness! Overloaded servers associated with HN article voting! Wrinkles associated with an increased risk of ageing! Tendency to reject loaded titles implying causality is associated with an increased risk of studying statistics! Facial bruises associated with an increased risk of punches!
- musicale 5y agoIn other news, water is still wet. I recall a talk describing a study to evaluate how the sleep-deprived lifestyle of college students was affecting their grades. Unfortunately the researchers had trouble finding a non-sleep-deprived control group at the school. They ended up paying students to (try to) sleep 8 hours a night (self-reported, though presumably somewhat accurately.) Unsurprisingly the less sleep-deprived group had better outcomes. Another study observed high school students found that in any class at any given time around 1/3 of them appeared to be asleep (not merely "not paying attention" but actually unconscious.) The effect did not appear to depend on the teacher or course material.