27 ms·

Good sleep, good learning, good life

324 points by maximveksler 14y ago

vanderZwan 14y ago
"It is everyone's dream to wake up fresh, happy, and ready for action on a daily basis. Sadly, in the modern world, only a small minority lives that dream. Yet the dream is within reach for most healthy people given a bit of knowledge, and a readiness to make some lifestyle sacrifice." If I click print is says 203 pages. That is not "a bit of knowledge" - not that I mind to spend time on what looks to be a very interesting an well-researched read.. Luckily he gives a TL;DR summary himself: "In the presented algorithm, you try to stick to your optimum bedtime and waking time every day. You establish a protected zone in the evening to favor phase advance (minimum light, computers, stress, excitement, etc.). You wake up to bright sunlight and use morning exercise to advance the phase in the morning. You ingest caffeine only in the morning. You avoid alcohol in the evening. If you nap, you nap early. If your phase keeps shifting, you add more light and exercise in the morning. You also extend your protected zone in the evening. In emergency, when you fear falling out of synch, you could occasionally use melatonin in the evening, or delicate sounds in the morning as the minimum effective departure from the free running sleep principle."
- Swizec 14y ago
  > You ingest caffeine only in the morning. But that makes no sense. Caffeine binds to adenosine receptors, which have to do with how sleepy you are. But they aren't doing anything in the morning as you've just woken up (think of them as a counter of how long you've been awake). Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine > Caffeine's principal mode of action is as an antagonist of adenosine receptors in the brain. I mean, if you're only going to drink caffeine in the morning you might as well go without. No need for the sweats, frequent visits to the loo and dehydration if you're not even going to use its upsides.
  - robinh 14y ago
    "But they aren't doing anything in the morning as you've just woken up (think of them as a counter of how long you've been awake" How so? If you wake up sleepy and groggy and all that, then what neuroreceptors are we talking about?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - yareally 14y ago
      I would guess they're one of the few lucky people that wake up feeling refreshed and perky in the morning. Me, I feel like zombie usually the first 30-45mins unless I have some caffeine shortly after waking up.
      - Swizec 14y ago
        Not at all, I've just realised that waiting for a bit works better than drinking caffeine. Exercise helps greatly as well.
  - naner 14y ago
    Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. I find this hard to believe. And it would be pretty easy to test using decaf coffee in a double-blind trial.
    - robryan 14y ago
      You would need people that have been caffeine free for a long time as to not have withdrawals effect the results. I would assume there would be a lot of variables in people caffeine responses which would be hard to control.
  - awolf 14y ago
    >Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. No. I understand what you're trying to convey but calling coffee before lunch a placebo is definitely going too far. It's true that caffeine binds to adenosine, but 1) there is always a non-trivial baseline of adenosine in your system (and for many, morning adenosine levels are high in spite of having just slept) and 2) there is more than just caffeine in coffee.
- alexkus 14y ago
  > You ingest caffeine only in the morning. I have slept so much better since switching to decaf[1]. I do miss a good coffee, but then some cafes do a good decaf and I'm quite happy drinking instant (decaf) coffee; it's also saving me a load of money[3]. > You avoid alcohol in the evening. So it's OK in the morning then? Oh, I see. 1. Most decaf is not completely caffeine free but it's generally 10% (at most) of the caffeine.[2] 2. And I've never really drunk Coca-Cola or anything other soft drinks with caffeine in them. 3. An £8 a (work) day coffee habit is close to two years off my mortgage.
lucb1e 14y ago
I don't get this. Skimming over it, I see it tells me something in yellow, centered and bolded text, and then goes on to refute why it's not true. I can't see a hint that it's a common myth or anything, it's presented as the truth at first. So either it's a horrible article (guide?) to look through without reading entirely, or I don't get it. TLDR anyone?
- lrhot9 14y ago
  Learning more about the author might convince you that it's worth reading: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...
  - lucb1e 14y ago
    Had to rush to catch a bus, would have read more thoroughly any other time.
- Charlesmigli 14y ago
  Here are the highlights the author has extracted from his study http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-good-learning-good-life http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-goo...
LatvjuAvs 14y ago
Le men discovers a way to live, must be the truth, must save everyone. Puts cape on... Still, opinion, opinions are fun :)
wiradikusuma 14y ago
A bit meta, it's almost 1am in here and I'm reading this. Such an irony.
- mwill 14y ago
  Australia or Asia? ; ) Hello from your West Australia GMT+8 cousin!
  - wiradikusuma 14y ago
    KL :) Btw your profile is empty!
- Tichy 14y ago
  Why, there are people whose sleep cycles makes 1am a perfectly sane time for being awake?
mhurron 14y ago
A little bit of exercise is something many people are lacking. I have had a long commute (1.5h one way) for a little over a year now. Not long into it I noticed that I wasn't sleeping well. Not that I was sleeping that well to begin with but it got worse. My day was sit in the car, sit at a desk, sit in the car, sit at a desk at home. My weekends were basically sit at a desk at home with some various chores sprinkled around. So I bought a cheap exercise bike. I use it about 20 minutes when I wake up, and 20 minutes when I get home. I sleep far better. I don't wake up all bright eyed but I've never been a morning person. However once I do get up I feel like I'm well rested. I also don't feel like I'm going to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon, or worse during the drive home, anymore either.
- tonyedgecombe 14y ago
  1.5 hours each way, 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week, 750 hours a year. That's 31 days of commuting. My advice is either change jobs or move home, that commute isn't sustainable, you will end up ruining your health, relationships and work.
  - mhurron 14y ago
    Saw this reply coming. Already looking at moving. Thing is, I wasn't sleeping the greatest before this job. The place I was at before was less than 30 minute commute. I needed the exercise either way. The exercise bike was a much cheaper change as well.
    - imcqueen 14y ago
      I used to commute an hour each way, but we moved and I'm now back to 25 minutes door to door. There's nothing better than getting time back in your day. When I was commuting I witnessed on at least two occasions people exercising in traffic. Literally one hand on the wheel, one hand holding a small weight. The bike sounds much safer, but I definitely agree that exercise is key to feeling energized.
  - gwern 14y ago
    Indeed. See the Commuting Paradox: http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html
deleted 14y ago
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gmurphy 14y ago
I've struggled with sleep issues since I was a small child; even after doing all the reasonable exercise/caffeine/no-bright-lights things people recommended, my brain sometimes just wouldn't shut down. After some introspection, I came to realize that my body seemed be on a 25 hour day, and it just wanted to stay awake an hour later each time. Then I read gwern's article on melatonin[1], and it changed everything. I don't get the shorter sleep he describes, but I take it once or twice a week to give me what feels like complete control over my sleep cycle. In addition the alertness/grumpiness benefits, it is truly great just being able to go to sleep and wake up at the same time as my wife (who seems to be on a 23-hour day). [1] http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin
- dhimes 14y ago
  I haven't read gwern's article, but I did discover that when my sleep cycle gets weird, a few nights with a melatonin supplement seems to reset things. I discovered it by accident. Years ago I was having terrible patterns, so out of desperation I tried melatonin. I'm a little paranoid of taking anything to the point of dependency so I would only do a couple of nights in a row, then not use it until I needed it. It works quite well for me this way, but I must say that occasionally I'll have dreams that are vivid and intense (meaning it get's my adrenaline going). Not nightmares, more anxiety-like.
- hoka 14y ago
  I've had a lot of success combining melatonin, low light before bedtime, drinking a moderate amount of water before bed, and f.lux (software). I use a heavier dose Friday+Saturday night to help me stay with a normal sleep schedule.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Melatonin is a prescription only med in the UK. I haven't asked a doctor for it, and I don't know what their reaction would be. When I've struggled with insomnia I've been given advice about sleep hygiene; then had someone give me help with sleep hygiene; then got a prescription for zopiclone. That was great for me, at that time. (I really needed sleep!!) but unfortunately the care got handed back to my GP and he was careless about the repeat prescriptions. SO, I ended up being able to get it for about a year. Luckily I didn't suffer too much from it, but some people find zopiclone addictive and there are other risks from it. What I'd really want, before getting to zopiclone (and probably before melatonin) would be access to a cognitive behaviour therapy course for insomnia.
kzahel 14y ago
I used to use this guy's program for palm pilot when memorizing some foreign language vocabulary. It was a pretty nice program and he put a lot of thought into the repetition and spacing algorithm. The author seems to think that memorization is the most important thing in the world, the justification being that things can only have subconscious connections once memorized. If only all my problems could be solved by memorizing facts!
- drivers99 14y ago
  His was one of the first (if not the first?) computerized SRS (spaced repetition systems) out there (flash cards methods existed, such as the Lietner box system). It's non-free though. There are several more modern alternatives out there. Most people I know (who are into SRS programs) use Anki: www.ankisrs.net You can even download pre-made decks from within the app (it's something like File->download->shared deck) that other people have made available for all kinds of topics (heavy emphasis on foreign languages).
ngokevin 14y ago
A good point to take away is the concept of "free running sleep". Going to sleep only when you are tired and waking up only naturally. The author says this is a way to feel refreshed every day waking up.
- daenz 14y ago
  > The greatest shortcoming of free running sleep is that it will often result in cycles longer than 24 hours. This eliminates free running sleep from a wider use in society.
snake_plissken 14y ago
Just read the alcohol part...whatttttttt? I fear we are all doomed. I can't remember the last weekend where I didn't go out and get drunk to some medium to very high degree on both nights...
- robinh 14y ago
  Er, that is not at all something all people do.
will_work4tears 14y ago
I've been weightlifting and lack of sleep has really limited my strength gains quite a bit. Food + Sleep can get you far, but Food with (4-5 hours of) Sleep isn't nearly as good. Performance at work isn't that depressed though, oddly enough. Anyway, I have a 10 month son that is teething or likewise going through some sleep pattern changes of some sort, and I can't exactly control that! Sleep is important though, enjoy the fact that you probably have more control over it than I do.
louischatriot 14y ago
For a few months, I've been working some serious hours and as a result slept about 5-6 hours per week nights. For one week now I've forced myself to sleep 8 hours even during the weeks, and noticed my productivity shoot up. It is worth it! Tldr of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-good-learning-good-life http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-goo...
govindkabra 14y ago
omg, how many charts this page has... i fell asleep just scrolling through the page.
TwistedWeasel 14y ago
Maybe co-sleeping is great for some families, maybe not for others. My kids (4 and 2) are impossible to sleep next to, they wriggle and kick and force me to the edge of the bed. In their own rooms they sleep just fine but they are still the primary cause of any bad sleep patterns I have. I consider both my children to be fairly good sleepers but they still get up at 6am every day no matter what and when one of them is sick, or teething, or just too wired to sleep then multiple wake ups per night are possible, even if they go back to sleep without intervention I still wake up myself. I could do any number of things to help improve my own sleep patterns but they are all moot until my kids get older.
- whyleyc 14y ago
  In terms of getting up too early in the morning some friends of mine have had good success with a Gro-Clock which gives children a visual indicator of when it's ok to get up: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gro-Clock-HJ008-Gro-Clock-Trainer/dp/B002APJCNE http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gro-Clock-HJ008-Gro-Clock-Trainer/dp...
  - alexkus 14y ago
    Yep, we hear our daughter shuffling around in bed, sighing and generally being restless and then at bang on 7am there's the sound of her getting out of bed and running in to our room shouting "Mummy, Daddy, the sun came up!"
- alexkus 14y ago
  No chance of co-sleeping. Daughter likes to sleep diagonally when in our bed and spends most of the night kicking me and pawing at my wife's face/hair. Joy. Luckily she has pretty much slept through the night (7pm to 7am) from 3 months old. This was good until ~2 years old when she started waking in the night and wanting to sleep in our bed. Having to put her back again and again until it sinks in isn't good for sleep. That has mostly settled down but then being 3 she's in the final stages of potty training so she's up occasionally in the night to want to go to the toilet (as she becomes aware of the need to wee) but it shouldn't be long before she's doing that all on her own (although I'll still probably wake up from the noise of her clattering around).
PlusSeven 14y ago
"Alarm clocks are bad for learning!", but is there any good ways to avoid the alarm clocks? I even feel uncomfortable without the alarms.
- PuercoPop 14y ago
  There is, it is called sleeping early.
antirez 14y ago
I and my wife co-sleep with my daughter that is now almost 4 months old, this worked very well for us, basically she sleeps the whole night, interrupting us just when she needs some milk. However because she is breastfed it is pretty natural because of co-sleeping so my wife just let she start getting the milk and fall asleep again after a few second. Surely it does not work for everybody but when it works it means to have small children without having sleep depravation, so I suggest to try this approach of breastfeeding + co-sleeping for sure. Btw we also don't use an alarm clock, but always go to bed around 00:00, and get up before 9:00 more or less automatically. When we don't sleep enough for some reason, the reality is that we lose a lot more time compared to the 9 hours of sleep as you are basically useless after noon because already too tired to really do great work (btw we actually sleep 8 hours, 1 hour is some pre-post bed time). IMHO sleep depravation is very very linked to procrastination.
- purephase 14y ago
  We tried this (our daughter is almost 6 months old) but every bloody doctor, nurse, family member etc. that we discussed this with put the every living terror in us about accidentally killing her. The baby slept well, we did not.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    There are cots which attach to the side of the bed which give the benefits of co-sleeping without the risk.
    - Tichy 14y ago
      Yay, we had that and it was great, highly recommended.
  - antirez 14y ago
    This is normal, family, doctors, and friends are dangerous: * Hey, you no longer have enough milk! Try giving some more integration with artificial milk. * You'll end killing her because of co-sleeping! * Co-sleeping will increase chances of SIDS! * Let her cry, otherwise you'll always carry her in your arms! * <Other bad advices here> And so forth. My advice is: don't listen to them, they tell you this with good intentions, but the reality is, for a shitload of years since we exist small babyes co-sleeped with their mothers. This is how it's supposed to work.
whiddershins 14y ago
I mostly have the habit/ability to sleep exactly 8 hours from whenever I go to bed, regardless of the time of day or time zone, with no alarm clock. I had much insomnia as a teenager and through age ~24. Even as a child, for who-knows what reason, I would resist sleep. While living alone, and working for myself, I decided to try free running sleep. Within a couple of months my sleep normalized to exactly 8 hours (who knew???), regardless of when I went to bed (which could be as ridiculously late as 6 or 11 am, I might run get a cup of coffee from the corner diner and enjoy a little morning air before going to sleep) Now, 15 years later, I still tend to sleep exactly 8 hours. It is less reliable because I no longer live alone, and occasionally jet-lag or work excitement will defeat me, but all in all the free sleeping approach makes me very happy. My policy is to only use an alarm when I have a specific appointment which I don't want to miss, and to keep my phones etc. silent while sleeping.
TheLarch 14y ago
"One cannot eat one's cake and have it too" This reverse version of the common idiom (to have one's cake and eat it too) is what got the Unabomber caught. Ted Kacynzski had a habit of saying it that way, and his brother saw it in his manifesto.
plnewman 14y ago
I dislike sleep and wish I did not have to do it.
ahoyhere 14y ago
This article looks like a really amazing resource. I haven't read it all but did a little Cmd+Fing to see if it broached the following topic, and it didn't, so I thought I'd chime in in case somebody else was where I was with these particular sleep issues: I used to have no problems sleeping at all, falling asleep whenever I wanted to, staying asleep all night, sleeping through noises… until I had mono for the second time and developed chronic fatigue syndrome. The worst symptom was inability to fall asleep, to stay asleep, and the crazy health impact that had (take a normal person and poke them til they wake up several times a night and they will soon develop the symptoms of fibromyalgia). I would get tired, but never sleepy; none of the usual sleep hygiene stuff helped. I had no racing thoughts, I wasn't lying in bed thinking about all the bad things I'd done or reliving my day. I'd come to grips with all that stuff a long time ago. There was nothing wrong with me psychologically, it was like my body was broken. I couldn't exercise because of the CFS, I'd be wiped out for days (but not sleeping). Quit caffeine, no help. Warm milk, tea, green tea extract, eyemask, earplugs, whatever, nothing helped. I would start to fall asleep and the slightest sound or movement would wake me. Or a stray thought as I started to drift. Again, not an important thought but I might start dreaming about sofas and where to put the sofa and then BAM, I'd wake up, like somebody ripped the sweet blanket of sleep away from me by main force. Not only would I be awake, I'd be unbearably furious. Sleep deprivation creates an inability to regulate emotion. Even my body temperature was out of whack, getting cold and warm (yet never warm enough) at all the wrong times. This is one of the major signs of true delayed sleep phase disorder as opposed to psychological or chemical insomnia. (The original article does touch on this but doesn't describe the details: if your morning temperature is very low, and your evening temperature warmer, that's out of whack. My temperature on first waking used to be 96.5 - 97 F, and evening I'd get quite hot, although never above 98 F even though for all of my previous life I'd always been bang on 98.6 F.) After months of this torture, I finally figured out that it was CFS. I found a book that absolutely gave me back my life: From Fatigued to Fantastic. I got my doctor to prescribe the author's recommendation for sleep troubles (after trying the herbal stuff and experiencing a paradoxical effect). The sleep recommendations alone gave me at least an 75% improvement in quality of life: Trazodone is one of only two drugs known to improve sleep architecture -- it's not a hypnotic, it doesn't knock you out, it actually helps you spend more time in deep sleep. Melatonin at just 300mcg (MICROgram, not mg) to do the "knock out" portion. Big doses of magnesium at night (I prefer the fizzy Austrian tablets and now I import them). Helps both with sleep, and muscle pain/stiffness from CFS/FM. For unknown reasons, this current winter has been brutal to me. I've been sick constantly and tired, tired, tired despite the fact that Philadelphia gets at least 3x the sun that Vienna does in the winter and despite the fact that I am taking mega doses of b-vitamins which always helped before. Also I am a lot happier here and work stress is much reduced. Still… exhausted. all. the. time. Over Christmas, my (Austrian) neurologist mother-in-law heard my winter symptoms and said "You have low serotonin. I want you to be on Welbutrin or Cymbalta." ( she obviously used the Austrian brand names.) I said, "But I'm not depressed." (And indeed, I am not, plus the 2 meds above were totally doing the trick in terms of falling asleep. The key is that I am too tired to do what I want to do… but I still really want to do it.) She told me, "That doesn't matter. Low serotonin can simply be a physical deficiency and not emotional." I said, "OK, but I'm not taking Welbutrin or Cymbalta." The trazodone I'm on has no "hangover" effect. It doesn't build up in the body and it's not addicting at the doses I take. These other drugs, though, can be opening a serious can of worms. So with permission from my actual doctor, I got an herbal supplement with huge doses of B vitamins, St John's Wort, Suntheanine (green tea extract), and GABA. This replaced my existing B-vitamin complex. Plus I started taking huge doses of vitamin D because my blood serum levels were ridiculously low (despite the extra sun!) and got my 10,000 lux SAD light habit back in gear. HUGE improvement. I have been able to reduce my trazodone dose by 33% and some nights I don't even need the melatonin. I actually get tired and fall asleep like a normal person. Can't tell you how amazing that is after 3 years of sleep problems. (Most amazingly, I have even slept once or twice without earplugs… something I thought I'd never be able to do again. EVER.) The 10,000 lux SAD light, the Vitamin D, and the herbal supplement has been an enormous improvement. The elements alone don't do the trick for me (I tried), but all 3 in combination make my life so much better.
swah 14y ago
If I wake up before the alarm clock, should I avoid going back to sleep until it rings? (suppose this time is around 30 min)
swah 14y ago
I have to wonder though, since I have several "issues" (waking up tired, lower back pain, tense in the shoulders, bruxism, procrastination, ...) in moderate intensity, if I should just "man up".
- Tichy 14y ago
  How do you "man up" against sleep deprivation? I think in general you shouldn't man up against your own body. I'm actually fascinated by this: popular mythology seems to push the "man up" principle for getting things done. But the real challenges I see are longterm sustainability, managing your resources properly to get through long tasks/projects. Maybe it is because movies lend themselves more to the "man up once and achieve a break through" type of stories than to the "act sensibly and continue for a looong time". Think learning piano: you can not man up and force yourself to learn piano in a 48h sleepless session (I assume :-)). You have to practice continuously for years. Sticking to it is the really hard part. Maning up for short bursts of time is actually easy.
readme 14y ago
> "This contraptions showed that it takes an average of 3 weeks to kill a rat by sleep deprivation (or some 5 months by REM sleep deprivation alone)(Rechtschaffen 1998[7])" It's a good thing rats don't code.
gordaco 14y ago
Interestingly, this article told me a LOT of things that I've already discovered on my own, and another few things that make me feel very relieved, since I thought that I was doing it all wrong. It seems that everyone but me is, ha! Ok, just kidding, but not so much. I've realized that I feel a lot better since I stopped doing what everyone does and started doing what my body tells me to do. First of all: I hate sleeping. No, really. Since I was like 9 years old. Sleeping feels good, or more exactly, going to sleep when you're sleepy feels good; but there are so many things to do through the day, that feel much better! Be it reading, studying, watching movies, any kind of game (videogames, board games, sports, you name it), or anything you like. Yeah, I've wished I didn't need to sleep since I was very young. Not too long after, I realized the harsh truth: not getting enough sleep is far worse than "waste" many hours in bed. You feel like shit (especially in the morning, just after artificially waking up), you perform worse on everything you do, and there are a few health issues. Of course, for most of my life I've been under the same bane than everyone: school and work create artificial constraints to sleeping schedules, so through all my life I've done very unwise things. I remember a period of several months when I slept twice a day from four to eight: once AM, once PM. It's actually a relatively benign schedule compared to other things I've done. So, I decided to tackle the problem, and now there are several things I do, with good results: 1) The article speaks against this, but try to go to sleep at about the same time everyday. What does this mean? Well, if your "sleeping time" is near but you don't feel tired at all (or you think you won't feel tired because it hasn't been an intense day), you may want to A) turn off as many lights as possible, and yes, this specifically includes computers, TV and phones (by the way, how many of you don't turn off the phone when you go to sleep? Please, don't do that to yourself!); and B) go for a walk and/or moderate exercise for about 30 minutes to tire you a little. Even walking through the rooms of your house might do the trick, actually. 2) In the adjustment phase (the article tells you how to do this; free-running sleep with little to no physical activity during a holiday week does the job for me), try to create a schedule that makes you get up a good 2-3 hours before you have to actually start preparing to go to work. I.e., if you would get up at 7 to immediately have breakfast as fast as possible, then take a shower and go to job with minimal "waste" of time, then schedule your sleep so that you get up at 5 or even a little sooner. This has some benefits like giving you quiet time to do whatever you want before work (I usually study); but more importantly, it ensures completely that, if one day you feel like you need a little more sleep, you can stay in bed as long as you want, and you'll be wide awake and energetic through all the day (however, try to increase your exercise that day, so that you'll feel tired and go to bed as soon as possible, thus not breaking your schedule. I've noted than a single day of not getting enough sleep may wreak havoc in your schedule, so this is actually quite important). This means, however, that you must go to bed soon, i.e.: say good-bye to your night life. I understand that this may put off many people, but at least try to think about this trade-off and which are your priorities. 3) This is my "secret weapon" that may also put off many people: no caffeine. Never in my life have I had any significant intake of caffeine, since I don't like coffee and I don't have coke that often. I'm not sure about how might this affect my schedule, but I'm confident that heavy coffee drinkers will have sleep problems despite their tolerance (they may not acknowledge it, since needing an alarm clock is widely not perceived as a huge sleep problem). I used to think that I was a non-24. Not any more! I just had a poor schedule and didn't know how to train my body to shorten a little my circadian rhythm (again, the article speaks about this). I also used to think that I was clearly an owl, but I currently sleep from about 20 to 4, and it's by far the most stable schedule I've ever had. It feels so good to be free from the tyranny of the alarm clock.
mikevm 14y ago
I'm glad to see Piotr updating some of the older articles @ supermemo.com. For those not familiar with Piotr or SuperMemo: it was the first spaced repetition software, based on his research many years ago. An early version of his spaced-repetition algorithm has been released to the wild, and is being used in some form in some free spaced-repetition software such as Mnemosyne and Anki. SuperMemo is written in Delphi, and the latest version is 15 (released last year -- I was a beta tester). It is notoriously complex, and has a very very steep learning curve. However, you can in fact start using it very quickly if you stick to the basic interface mode (you can change modes from Beginner to Professional). Before I started using it, I'd spent weeks reading the articles @ supermemo.com and I learned a lot (I highly recommend reading his articles). Note: the reason the UI of SM15 is horrendous is because Piotr is the one developing it (he's also a die-hard user), and he doesn't seem to care much about the UI since it seems to do exactly what he needs it to do ;-). One of the more interesting features that SuperMemo has that other spaced-repetition apps don't is something called "Incremental Reading" (http://supermemo.com/help/read.htm#What_is_incremental_reading.3F http://supermemo.com/help/read.htm#What_is_incremental_readi...). It lets you import articles (say, from Wikipedia), and read them in chunks, while extracting parts of the articles you want to "remember" further and furhter, this is how it works: 1. You import an article using the import tool. 2. The article comes up every once in a while as part of your spaced-repetition routine. You read a part of it and you may extract a paragraph that you believe contains information that you want to learn/remember. This paragraph gets colored (so you know in the future which ones you've extracted). Once you're bored, you skip the article and move on to the next repetition element. 3. Both the article (as long as you haven't dismissed it) and the bits you have extracted may come up in your daily spaced-reptition routine. This way you get to process the article itself (extracting more chunks, as needed), and work on the extracted chunks until there is no more to extract. 4. Ideally you should be left with a bunch of sentences, as simple as possible which you will probably have to rewrite (he gives tips on how to do it here: http://supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm http://supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm). At this point you will reformulate sentences into Q & A form. SuperMemo lets you select a word and choose "extract cloze" or something like that, it will automatically add a Q & A item where the question is the sentence with the missing word, and you have to complete it. I have to be honest, I have used SuperMemo in the past with great success, but now as a busy University student, I really have no time to reformulate knowledge so that it's in proper form, nor do I have time to actually do the repetitions every day as it requires a lot of self-discipline. One more thing that I dislike about SuperMemo is the fact that all data elements are in HTML (it's based on an IE browser control), so it is very limited when it comes to making clozes of mathematical expressions (I get around some of the problems by using TTH [http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/] http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/]). Note that they also have another company which releases a product called SuperMemo UX (http://www.supermemo.eu/supermemo_ux http://www.supermemo.eu/supermemo_ux) which uses .NET and the SM15 algorithm, but it is not developed by Piotr himself (SM15 is). It looks like UX much less flexible, and probably mostly geared to learning vocabulary using the pre-made packages they sell on their website.

324 points by maximveksler 14y ago

"It is everyone's dream to wake up fresh, happy, and ready for action on a daily basis. Sadly, in the modern world, only a small minority lives that dream. Yet the dream is within reach for most healthy people given a bit of knowledge, and a readiness to make some lifestyle sacrifice." If I click print is says 203 pages. That is not "a bit of knowledge" - not that I mind to spend time on what looks to be a very interesting an well-researched read.. Luckily he gives a TL;DR summary himself: "In the presented algorithm, you try to stick to your optimum bedtime and waking time every day. You establish a protected zone in the evening to favor phase advance (minimum light, computers, stress, excitement, etc.). You wake up to bright sunlight and use morning exercise to advance the phase in the morning. You ingest caffeine only in the morning. You avoid alcohol in the evening. If you nap, you nap early. If your phase keeps shifting, you add more light and exercise in the morning. You also extend your protected zone in the evening. In emergency, when you fear falling out of synch, you could occasionally use melatonin in the evening, or delicate sounds in the morning as the minimum effective departure from the free running sleep principle."

Swizec 14y ago
> You ingest caffeine only in the morning. But that makes no sense. Caffeine binds to adenosine receptors, which have to do with how sleepy you are. But they aren't doing anything in the morning as you've just woken up (think of them as a counter of how long you've been awake). Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine > Caffeine's principal mode of action is as an antagonist of adenosine receptors in the brain. I mean, if you're only going to drink caffeine in the morning you might as well go without. No need for the sweats, frequent visits to the loo and dehydration if you're not even going to use its upsides.
- robinh 14y ago
  "But they aren't doing anything in the morning as you've just woken up (think of them as a counter of how long you've been awake" How so? If you wake up sleepy and groggy and all that, then what neuroreceptors are we talking about?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - yareally 14y ago
    I would guess they're one of the few lucky people that wake up feeling refreshed and perky in the morning. Me, I feel like zombie usually the first 30-45mins unless I have some caffeine shortly after waking up.
    - Swizec 14y ago
      Not at all, I've just realised that waiting for a bit works better than drinking caffeine. Exercise helps greatly as well.
- naner 14y ago
  Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. I find this hard to believe. And it would be pretty easy to test using decaf coffee in a double-blind trial.
  - robryan 14y ago
    You would need people that have been caffeine free for a long time as to not have withdrawals effect the results. I would assume there would be a lot of variables in people caffeine responses which would be hard to control.
- awolf 14y ago
  >Any coffee before lunch is just a placebo really. No. I understand what you're trying to convey but calling coffee before lunch a placebo is definitely going too far. It's true that caffeine binds to adenosine, but 1) there is always a non-trivial baseline of adenosine in your system (and for many, morning adenosine levels are high in spite of having just slept) and 2) there is more than just caffeine in coffee.
alexkus 14y ago
> You ingest caffeine only in the morning. I have slept so much better since switching to decaf[1]. I do miss a good coffee, but then some cafes do a good decaf and I'm quite happy drinking instant (decaf) coffee; it's also saving me a load of money[3]. > You avoid alcohol in the evening. So it's OK in the morning then? Oh, I see. 1. Most decaf is not completely caffeine free but it's generally 10% (at most) of the caffeine.[2] 2. And I've never really drunk Coca-Cola or anything other soft drinks with caffeine in them. 3. An £8 a (work) day coffee habit is close to two years off my mortgage.

lucb1e 14y ago

I don't get this. Skimming over it, I see it tells me something in yellow, centered and bolded text, and then goes on to refute why it's not true. I can't see a hint that it's a common myth or anything, it's presented as the truth at first. So either it's a horrible article (guide?) to look through without reading entirely, or I don't get it. TLDR anyone?

lrhot9 14y ago
Learning more about the author might convince you that it's worth reading: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...
- lucb1e 14y ago
  Had to rush to catch a bus, would have read more thoroughly any other time.
Charlesmigli 14y ago
Here are the highlights the author has extracted from his study http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-good-learning-good-life http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-goo...

LatvjuAvs 14y ago

Le men discovers a way to live, must be the truth, must save everyone. Puts cape on... Still, opinion, opinions are fun :)

wiradikusuma 14y ago

A bit meta, it's almost 1am in here and I'm reading this. Such an irony.

mwill 14y ago
Australia or Asia? ; ) Hello from your West Australia GMT+8 cousin!
- wiradikusuma 14y ago
  KL :) Btw your profile is empty!
Tichy 14y ago
Why, there are people whose sleep cycles makes 1am a perfectly sane time for being awake?

mhurron 14y ago

A little bit of exercise is something many people are lacking. I have had a long commute (1.5h one way) for a little over a year now. Not long into it I noticed that I wasn't sleeping well. Not that I was sleeping that well to begin with but it got worse. My day was sit in the car, sit at a desk, sit in the car, sit at a desk at home. My weekends were basically sit at a desk at home with some various chores sprinkled around. So I bought a cheap exercise bike. I use it about 20 minutes when I wake up, and 20 minutes when I get home. I sleep far better. I don't wake up all bright eyed but I've never been a morning person. However once I do get up I feel like I'm well rested. I also don't feel like I'm going to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon, or worse during the drive home, anymore either.

tonyedgecombe 14y ago
1.5 hours each way, 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week, 750 hours a year. That's 31 days of commuting. My advice is either change jobs or move home, that commute isn't sustainable, you will end up ruining your health, relationships and work.
- mhurron 14y ago
  Saw this reply coming. Already looking at moving. Thing is, I wasn't sleeping the greatest before this job. The place I was at before was less than 30 minute commute. I needed the exercise either way. The exercise bike was a much cheaper change as well.
  - imcqueen 14y ago
    I used to commute an hour each way, but we moved and I'm now back to 25 minutes door to door. There's nothing better than getting time back in your day. When I was commuting I witnessed on at least two occasions people exercising in traffic. Literally one hand on the wheel, one hand holding a small weight. The bike sounds much safer, but I definitely agree that exercise is key to feeling energized.
- gwern 14y ago
  Indeed. See the Commuting Paradox: http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html

deleted 14y ago

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gmurphy 14y ago

I've struggled with sleep issues since I was a small child; even after doing all the reasonable exercise/caffeine/no-bright-lights things people recommended, my brain sometimes just wouldn't shut down. After some introspection, I came to realize that my body seemed be on a 25 hour day, and it just wanted to stay awake an hour later each time. Then I read gwern's article on melatonin[1], and it changed everything. I don't get the shorter sleep he describes, but I take it once or twice a week to give me what feels like complete control over my sleep cycle. In addition the alertness/grumpiness benefits, it is truly great just being able to go to sleep and wake up at the same time as my wife (who seems to be on a 23-hour day). [1] http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

dhimes 14y ago
I haven't read gwern's article, but I did discover that when my sleep cycle gets weird, a few nights with a melatonin supplement seems to reset things. I discovered it by accident. Years ago I was having terrible patterns, so out of desperation I tried melatonin. I'm a little paranoid of taking anything to the point of dependency so I would only do a couple of nights in a row, then not use it until I needed it. It works quite well for me this way, but I must say that occasionally I'll have dreams that are vivid and intense (meaning it get's my adrenaline going). Not nightmares, more anxiety-like.
hoka 14y ago
I've had a lot of success combining melatonin, low light before bedtime, drinking a moderate amount of water before bed, and f.lux (software). I use a heavier dose Friday+Saturday night to help me stay with a normal sleep schedule.
DanBC 14y ago
Melatonin is a prescription only med in the UK. I haven't asked a doctor for it, and I don't know what their reaction would be. When I've struggled with insomnia I've been given advice about sleep hygiene; then had someone give me help with sleep hygiene; then got a prescription for zopiclone. That was great for me, at that time. (I really needed sleep!!) but unfortunately the care got handed back to my GP and he was careless about the repeat prescriptions. SO, I ended up being able to get it for about a year. Luckily I didn't suffer too much from it, but some people find zopiclone addictive and there are other risks from it. What I'd really want, before getting to zopiclone (and probably before melatonin) would be access to a cognitive behaviour therapy course for insomnia.

kzahel 14y ago

I used to use this guy's program for palm pilot when memorizing some foreign language vocabulary. It was a pretty nice program and he put a lot of thought into the repetition and spacing algorithm. The author seems to think that memorization is the most important thing in the world, the justification being that things can only have subconscious connections once memorized. If only all my problems could be solved by memorizing facts!

drivers99 14y ago
His was one of the first (if not the first?) computerized SRS (spaced repetition systems) out there (flash cards methods existed, such as the Lietner box system). It's non-free though. There are several more modern alternatives out there. Most people I know (who are into SRS programs) use Anki: www.ankisrs.net You can even download pre-made decks from within the app (it's something like File->download->shared deck) that other people have made available for all kinds of topics (heavy emphasis on foreign languages).

ngokevin 14y ago

A good point to take away is the concept of "free running sleep". Going to sleep only when you are tired and waking up only naturally. The author says this is a way to feel refreshed every day waking up.

daenz 14y ago
> The greatest shortcoming of free running sleep is that it will often result in cycles longer than 24 hours. This eliminates free running sleep from a wider use in society.

snake_plissken 14y ago

Just read the alcohol part...whatttttttt? I fear we are all doomed. I can't remember the last weekend where I didn't go out and get drunk to some medium to very high degree on both nights...

robinh 14y ago
Er, that is not at all something all people do.

will_work4tears 14y ago

I've been weightlifting and lack of sleep has really limited my strength gains quite a bit. Food + Sleep can get you far, but Food with (4-5 hours of) Sleep isn't nearly as good. Performance at work isn't that depressed though, oddly enough. Anyway, I have a 10 month son that is teething or likewise going through some sleep pattern changes of some sort, and I can't exactly control that! Sleep is important though, enjoy the fact that you probably have more control over it than I do.

louischatriot 14y ago

For a few months, I've been working some serious hours and as a result slept about 5-6 hours per week nights. For one week now I've forced myself to sleep 8 hours even during the weeks, and noticed my productivity shoot up. It is worth it! Tldr of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-good-learning-good-life http://tldr.io/tldrs/5123bba2793151711c00001b/good-sleep-goo...

govindkabra 14y ago

omg, how many charts this page has... i fell asleep just scrolling through the page.

TwistedWeasel 14y ago

Maybe co-sleeping is great for some families, maybe not for others. My kids (4 and 2) are impossible to sleep next to, they wriggle and kick and force me to the edge of the bed. In their own rooms they sleep just fine but they are still the primary cause of any bad sleep patterns I have. I consider both my children to be fairly good sleepers but they still get up at 6am every day no matter what and when one of them is sick, or teething, or just too wired to sleep then multiple wake ups per night are possible, even if they go back to sleep without intervention I still wake up myself. I could do any number of things to help improve my own sleep patterns but they are all moot until my kids get older.

whyleyc 14y ago
In terms of getting up too early in the morning some friends of mine have had good success with a Gro-Clock which gives children a visual indicator of when it's ok to get up: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gro-Clock-HJ008-Gro-Clock-Trainer/dp/B002APJCNE http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gro-Clock-HJ008-Gro-Clock-Trainer/dp...
- alexkus 14y ago
  Yep, we hear our daughter shuffling around in bed, sighing and generally being restless and then at bang on 7am there's the sound of her getting out of bed and running in to our room shouting "Mummy, Daddy, the sun came up!"
alexkus 14y ago
No chance of co-sleeping. Daughter likes to sleep diagonally when in our bed and spends most of the night kicking me and pawing at my wife's face/hair. Joy. Luckily she has pretty much slept through the night (7pm to 7am) from 3 months old. This was good until ~2 years old when she started waking in the night and wanting to sleep in our bed. Having to put her back again and again until it sinks in isn't good for sleep. That has mostly settled down but then being 3 she's in the final stages of potty training so she's up occasionally in the night to want to go to the toilet (as she becomes aware of the need to wee) but it shouldn't be long before she's doing that all on her own (although I'll still probably wake up from the noise of her clattering around).

PlusSeven 14y ago

"Alarm clocks are bad for learning!", but is there any good ways to avoid the alarm clocks? I even feel uncomfortable without the alarms.

PuercoPop 14y ago
There is, it is called sleeping early.

antirez 14y ago

I and my wife co-sleep with my daughter that is now almost 4 months old, this worked very well for us, basically she sleeps the whole night, interrupting us just when she needs some milk. However because she is breastfed it is pretty natural because of co-sleeping so my wife just let she start getting the milk and fall asleep again after a few second. Surely it does not work for everybody but when it works it means to have small children without having sleep depravation, so I suggest to try this approach of breastfeeding + co-sleeping for sure. Btw we also don't use an alarm clock, but always go to bed around 00:00, and get up before 9:00 more or less automatically. When we don't sleep enough for some reason, the reality is that we lose a lot more time compared to the 9 hours of sleep as you are basically useless after noon because already too tired to really do great work (btw we actually sleep 8 hours, 1 hour is some pre-post bed time). IMHO sleep depravation is very very linked to procrastination.

purephase 14y ago
We tried this (our daughter is almost 6 months old) but every bloody doctor, nurse, family member etc. that we discussed this with put the every living terror in us about accidentally killing her. The baby slept well, we did not.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There are cots which attach to the side of the bed which give the benefits of co-sleeping without the risk.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    Yay, we had that and it was great, highly recommended.
- antirez 14y ago
  This is normal, family, doctors, and friends are dangerous: * Hey, you no longer have enough milk! Try giving some more integration with artificial milk. * You'll end killing her because of co-sleeping! * Co-sleeping will increase chances of SIDS! * Let her cry, otherwise you'll always carry her in your arms! * <Other bad advices here> And so forth. My advice is: don't listen to them, they tell you this with good intentions, but the reality is, for a shitload of years since we exist small babyes co-sleeped with their mothers. This is how it's supposed to work.

whiddershins 14y ago

I mostly have the habit/ability to sleep exactly 8 hours from whenever I go to bed, regardless of the time of day or time zone, with no alarm clock. I had much insomnia as a teenager and through age ~24. Even as a child, for who-knows what reason, I would resist sleep. While living alone, and working for myself, I decided to try free running sleep. Within a couple of months my sleep normalized to exactly 8 hours (who knew???), regardless of when I went to bed (which could be as ridiculously late as 6 or 11 am, I might run get a cup of coffee from the corner diner and enjoy a little morning air before going to sleep) Now, 15 years later, I still tend to sleep exactly 8 hours. It is less reliable because I no longer live alone, and occasionally jet-lag or work excitement will defeat me, but all in all the free sleeping approach makes me very happy. My policy is to only use an alarm when I have a specific appointment which I don't want to miss, and to keep my phones etc. silent while sleeping.

TheLarch 14y ago

"One cannot eat one's cake and have it too" This reverse version of the common idiom (to have one's cake and eat it too) is what got the Unabomber caught. Ted Kacynzski had a habit of saying it that way, and his brother saw it in his manifesto.

plnewman 14y ago

I dislike sleep and wish I did not have to do it.

ahoyhere 14y ago

This article looks like a really amazing resource. I haven't read it all but did a little Cmd+Fing to see if it broached the following topic, and it didn't, so I thought I'd chime in in case somebody else was where I was with these particular sleep issues: I used to have no problems sleeping at all, falling asleep whenever I wanted to, staying asleep all night, sleeping through noises… until I had mono for the second time and developed chronic fatigue syndrome. The worst symptom was inability to fall asleep, to stay asleep, and the crazy health impact that had (take a normal person and poke them til they wake up several times a night and they will soon develop the symptoms of fibromyalgia). I would get tired, but never sleepy; none of the usual sleep hygiene stuff helped. I had no racing thoughts, I wasn't lying in bed thinking about all the bad things I'd done or reliving my day. I'd come to grips with all that stuff a long time ago. There was nothing wrong with me psychologically, it was like my body was broken. I couldn't exercise because of the CFS, I'd be wiped out for days (but not sleeping). Quit caffeine, no help. Warm milk, tea, green tea extract, eyemask, earplugs, whatever, nothing helped. I would start to fall asleep and the slightest sound or movement would wake me. Or a stray thought as I started to drift. Again, not an important thought but I might start dreaming about sofas and where to put the sofa and then BAM, I'd wake up, like somebody ripped the sweet blanket of sleep away from me by main force. Not only would I be awake, I'd be unbearably furious. Sleep deprivation creates an inability to regulate emotion. Even my body temperature was out of whack, getting cold and warm (yet never warm enough) at all the wrong times. This is one of the major signs of true delayed sleep phase disorder as opposed to psychological or chemical insomnia. (The original article does touch on this but doesn't describe the details: if your morning temperature is very low, and your evening temperature warmer, that's out of whack. My temperature on first waking used to be 96.5 - 97 F, and evening I'd get quite hot, although never above 98 F even though for all of my previous life I'd always been bang on 98.6 F.) After months of this torture, I finally figured out that it was CFS. I found a book that absolutely gave me back my life: From Fatigued to Fantastic. I got my doctor to prescribe the author's recommendation for sleep troubles (after trying the herbal stuff and experiencing a paradoxical effect). The sleep recommendations alone gave me at least an 75% improvement in quality of life: Trazodone is one of only two drugs known to improve sleep architecture -- it's not a hypnotic, it doesn't knock you out, it actually helps you spend more time in deep sleep. Melatonin at just 300mcg (MICROgram, not mg) to do the "knock out" portion. Big doses of magnesium at night (I prefer the fizzy Austrian tablets and now I import them). Helps both with sleep, and muscle pain/stiffness from CFS/FM. For unknown reasons, this current winter has been brutal to me. I've been sick constantly and tired, tired, tired despite the fact that Philadelphia gets at least 3x the sun that Vienna does in the winter and despite the fact that I am taking mega doses of b-vitamins which always helped before. Also I am a lot happier here and work stress is much reduced. Still… exhausted. all. the. time. Over Christmas, my (Austrian) neurologist mother-in-law heard my winter symptoms and said "You have low serotonin. I want you to be on Welbutrin or Cymbalta." ( she obviously used the Austrian brand names.) I said, "But I'm not depressed." (And indeed, I am not, plus the 2 meds above were totally doing the trick in terms of falling asleep. The key is that I am too tired to do what I want to do… but I still really want to do it.) She told me, "That doesn't matter. Low serotonin can simply be a physical deficiency and not emotional." I said, "OK, but I'm not taking Welbutrin or Cymbalta." The trazodone I'm on has no "hangover" effect. It doesn't build up in the body and it's not addicting at the doses I take. These other drugs, though, can be opening a serious can of worms. So with permission from my actual doctor, I got an herbal supplement with huge doses of B vitamins, St John's Wort, Suntheanine (green tea extract), and GABA. This replaced my existing B-vitamin complex. Plus I started taking huge doses of vitamin D because my blood serum levels were ridiculously low (despite the extra sun!) and got my 10,000 lux SAD light habit back in gear. HUGE improvement. I have been able to reduce my trazodone dose by 33% and some nights I don't even need the melatonin. I actually get tired and fall asleep like a normal person. Can't tell you how amazing that is after 3 years of sleep problems. (Most amazingly, I have even slept once or twice without earplugs… something I thought I'd never be able to do again. EVER.) The 10,000 lux SAD light, the Vitamin D, and the herbal supplement has been an enormous improvement. The elements alone don't do the trick for me (I tried), but all 3 in combination make my life so much better.

swah 14y ago

If I wake up before the alarm clock, should I avoid going back to sleep until it rings? (suppose this time is around 30 min)

swah 14y ago

I have to wonder though, since I have several "issues" (waking up tired, lower back pain, tense in the shoulders, bruxism, procrastination, ...) in moderate intensity, if I should just "man up".

Tichy 14y ago
How do you "man up" against sleep deprivation? I think in general you shouldn't man up against your own body. I'm actually fascinated by this: popular mythology seems to push the "man up" principle for getting things done. But the real challenges I see are longterm sustainability, managing your resources properly to get through long tasks/projects. Maybe it is because movies lend themselves more to the "man up once and achieve a break through" type of stories than to the "act sensibly and continue for a looong time". Think learning piano: you can not man up and force yourself to learn piano in a 48h sleepless session (I assume :-)). You have to practice continuously for years. Sticking to it is the really hard part. Maning up for short bursts of time is actually easy.

readme 14y ago

> "This contraptions showed that it takes an average of 3 weeks to kill a rat by sleep deprivation (or some 5 months by REM sleep deprivation alone)(Rechtschaffen 1998[7])" It's a good thing rats don't code.

gordaco 14y ago

Interestingly, this article told me a LOT of things that I've already discovered on my own, and another few things that make me feel very relieved, since I thought that I was doing it all wrong. It seems that everyone but me is, ha! Ok, just kidding, but not so much. I've realized that I feel a lot better since I stopped doing what everyone does and started doing what my body tells me to do. First of all: I hate sleeping. No, really. Since I was like 9 years old. Sleeping feels good, or more exactly, going to sleep when you're sleepy feels good; but there are so many things to do through the day, that feel much better! Be it reading, studying, watching movies, any kind of game (videogames, board games, sports, you name it), or anything you like. Yeah, I've wished I didn't need to sleep since I was very young. Not too long after, I realized the harsh truth: not getting enough sleep is far worse than "waste" many hours in bed. You feel like shit (especially in the morning, just after artificially waking up), you perform worse on everything you do, and there are a few health issues. Of course, for most of my life I've been under the same bane than everyone: school and work create artificial constraints to sleeping schedules, so through all my life I've done very unwise things. I remember a period of several months when I slept twice a day from four to eight: once AM, once PM. It's actually a relatively benign schedule compared to other things I've done. So, I decided to tackle the problem, and now there are several things I do, with good results: 1) The article speaks against this, but try to go to sleep at about the same time everyday. What does this mean? Well, if your "sleeping time" is near but you don't feel tired at all (or you think you won't feel tired because it hasn't been an intense day), you may want to A) turn off as many lights as possible, and yes, this specifically includes computers, TV and phones (by the way, how many of you don't turn off the phone when you go to sleep? Please, don't do that to yourself!); and B) go for a walk and/or moderate exercise for about 30 minutes to tire you a little. Even walking through the rooms of your house might do the trick, actually. 2) In the adjustment phase (the article tells you how to do this; free-running sleep with little to no physical activity during a holiday week does the job for me), try to create a schedule that makes you get up a good 2-3 hours before you have to actually start preparing to go to work. I.e., if you would get up at 7 to immediately have breakfast as fast as possible, then take a shower and go to job with minimal "waste" of time, then schedule your sleep so that you get up at 5 or even a little sooner. This has some benefits like giving you quiet time to do whatever you want before work (I usually study); but more importantly, it ensures completely that, if one day you feel like you need a little more sleep, you can stay in bed as long as you want, and you'll be wide awake and energetic through all the day (however, try to increase your exercise that day, so that you'll feel tired and go to bed as soon as possible, thus not breaking your schedule. I've noted than a single day of not getting enough sleep may wreak havoc in your schedule, so this is actually quite important). This means, however, that you must go to bed soon, i.e.: say good-bye to your night life. I understand that this may put off many people, but at least try to think about this trade-off and which are your priorities. 3) This is my "secret weapon" that may also put off many people: no caffeine. Never in my life have I had any significant intake of caffeine, since I don't like coffee and I don't have coke that often. I'm not sure about how might this affect my schedule, but I'm confident that heavy coffee drinkers will have sleep problems despite their tolerance (they may not acknowledge it, since needing an alarm clock is widely not perceived as a huge sleep problem). I used to think that I was a non-24. Not any more! I just had a poor schedule and didn't know how to train my body to shorten a little my circadian rhythm (again, the article speaks about this). I also used to think that I was clearly an owl, but I currently sleep from about 20 to 4, and it's by far the most stable schedule I've ever had. It feels so good to be free from the tyranny of the alarm clock.

mikevm 14y ago

I'm glad to see Piotr updating some of the older articles @ supermemo.com. For those not familiar with Piotr or SuperMemo: it was the first spaced repetition software, based on his research many years ago. An early version of his spaced-repetition algorithm has been released to the wild, and is being used in some form in some free spaced-repetition software such as Mnemosyne and Anki. SuperMemo is written in Delphi, and the latest version is 15 (released last year -- I was a beta tester). It is notoriously complex, and has a very very steep learning curve. However, you can in fact start using it very quickly if you stick to the basic interface mode (you can change modes from Beginner to Professional). Before I started using it, I'd spent weeks reading the articles @ supermemo.com and I learned a lot (I highly recommend reading his articles). Note: the reason the UI of SM15 is horrendous is because Piotr is the one developing it (he's also a die-hard user), and he doesn't seem to care much about the UI since it seems to do exactly what he needs it to do ;-). One of the more interesting features that SuperMemo has that other spaced-repetition apps don't is something called "Incremental Reading" (http://supermemo.com/help/read.htm#What_is_incremental_reading.3F http://supermemo.com/help/read.htm#What_is_incremental_readi...). It lets you import articles (say, from Wikipedia), and read them in chunks, while extracting parts of the articles you want to "remember" further and furhter, this is how it works: 1. You import an article using the import tool. 2. The article comes up every once in a while as part of your spaced-repetition routine. You read a part of it and you may extract a paragraph that you believe contains information that you want to learn/remember. This paragraph gets colored (so you know in the future which ones you've extracted). Once you're bored, you skip the article and move on to the next repetition element. 3. Both the article (as long as you haven't dismissed it) and the bits you have extracted may come up in your daily spaced-reptition routine. This way you get to process the article itself (extracting more chunks, as needed), and work on the extracted chunks until there is no more to extract. 4. Ideally you should be left with a bunch of sentences, as simple as possible which you will probably have to rewrite (he gives tips on how to do it here: http://supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm http://supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm). At this point you will reformulate sentences into Q & A form. SuperMemo lets you select a word and choose "extract cloze" or something like that, it will automatically add a Q & A item where the question is the sentence with the missing word, and you have to complete it. I have to be honest, I have used SuperMemo in the past with great success, but now as a busy University student, I really have no time to reformulate knowledge so that it's in proper form, nor do I have time to actually do the repetitions every day as it requires a lot of self-discipline. One more thing that I dislike about SuperMemo is the fact that all data elements are in HTML (it's based on an IE browser control), so it is very limited when it comes to making clozes of mathematical expressions (I get around some of the problems by using TTH [http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/] http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/]). Note that they also have another company which releases a product called SuperMemo UX (http://www.supermemo.eu/supermemo_ux http://www.supermemo.eu/supermemo_ux) which uses .NET and the SM15 algorithm, but it is not developed by Piotr himself (SM15 is). It looks like UX much less flexible, and probably mostly geared to learning vocabulary using the pre-made packages they sell on their website.