4 ms·
I can't speak for everyone, but for some it's a case of never being able to get your brain to shut down properly from a work point of view, which can be both th
by corin_ 15y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but for some it's a case of never being able to get your brain to shut down properly from a work point of view, which can be both the reason for sleep problems and the reason for success.
My current boss summed it up once when he said "the reason I'm always working outside hours [he works most evenings, will often get an email from him at 3am, most days a call sometime between 8pm and midnight - and this isn't some young startup hacker, he's a successful CEO of 10 years] is that I'm afraid of missing any opportunities".
Another way of putting that is Carpe Diem, one of my favourite quotes.
I'm the same, no matter what I'm doing - including trying to get to sleep - thoughts keep cropping up. Should we be talking to Company X. Do we need to hire Person Y. Why haven't we created Product Z.
- dgallagher 15y agoThis might sound a little weird, but try putting an large ice-pack on your head while you're lying in bed, ready to go to sleep: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/17/tip-for-insomniacs-cool-your-head-to-fall-asleep/ http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/17/tip-for-insomniacs-coo... I've done it a few times and after about 10 minutes, any racing-thoughts in my brain dissipate, and it becomes much easier to go to sleep.
- corin_ 15y agoI don't know if it's necessarily a good thing to get rid of it. Maybe a better balance is needed, but I think there's a real link with the kind of person who can't sleep for thinking of work, and success in what they are doing.
- slewis 15y agoI've found my poor sleep correlates with how late I'm working on a problem. I try to go to bed around 11pm. If I'm done working by 6pm I'm more likely to sleep ok. 8pm is pushing it. Any later than that the problem won't be out of my head by the time I lay down, and it stays there all night.
- dgallagher 15y agoWorking on a problem late can sometimes be beneficial. I've been up late with a problem in my head and went to bed with little downtime. It's hard to go to sleep, definitely. However, I've actually dreamt the solution a few times, and woke up the next morning knowing exactly what to code. This happened two nights ago. I was coding something fairly complex and had a hard time connecting everything together. It was something I had been struggling with for two weeks. In a dream, I figured out how to make things much simpler. The next morning I deleted 1000 lines of code, re-structured things, and got it working succinctly. But you definitely don't sleep very well when you do it. :)
- slewis 15y agoCouldn't agree more... happens to me all the time.