8 ms·

Why Broken Sleep Is a Golden Time for Creativity

241 points by benbreen 12y ago

scott_karana 12y ago
He's made a reasonable historical case for the commonness of a split cycle sleep. However, I wanted more evidence, so I looked to an ancestor: research on chimpanzees in wild seems to indicate that they start their days at dawn, and sleep mainly uninterrupted through the night... Did humans really diverge that much? I suppose further studies will tell. (After all, the creative differences seem undeniable, anecdotally...)
japhyr 12y ago
This is a wonderful reflection on the joys and productivity of getting up when you wake up, and running with your naturally wakeful energy while it lasts. My job is the only thing keeping me on a set schedule. When I retire, or if I make a move to freelancing full-time, I'm really curious to see what becomes of my schedule. I'll stay grounded in time somehow, but I'll also lose myself in time on a regular basis.
- drbawb 12y ago
  The article actually sounds a lot like my sleep schedule. I retire quite early (9-10PM) compared to my roommates who will game, drink, and socialize into the wee hours of the night. I have to be up around 6:30AM to do my morning routine. I often find myself waking up around 3:00 or 4:00 though. I just can't bring myself to "run with my naturally wakeful energy," though. Those next few hours until my alarm goes off are the most precious thing in the world. I bundle up, and try to get back to sleep. Usually I'm in an odd state of creative reflection, an almost "wakeful dreaming." It's more like wishful thinking, or a daydream, than an actual dream. My mind is too busy to sleep, but I can't let it run wild, I have to work in two hours. --- Then, just as I'm dozing off, my (sleep cycle aware) alarm clock goes off and tells me it's time to get up. Then I feel lethargic all day; spending my entire day anxious to get home so I can do the same thing all over again. --- My sleep cycle app tells me I'm a pretty decent sleeper (unless I've had a drink). Perhaps I'm just naturally a segmented sleeper; but what's a part-time student/full-time employee to do?
  - mytochar 12y ago
    You regularly sleep nine and a half hours at night? Maybe waking up at 3 and 4 is when your body's ready to wake up, since it's been 6 or 7 hours.
  - smt88 12y ago
    It honestly sounds like you have some anxiety issues that are interfering with your sleep. It may even be that you feel anxious about not sleeping (and therefore having a lethargic day), which keeps you up. You should certainly look into "sleep hygiene". If you religiously practice it, you may have better luck. Some of the recommendations are: no caffeine, no alcohol, get out of bed if you can't sleep, don't work in your bedroom, wake up at the same time every day. I can't remember the rest.
jumby 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep
julianpye 12y ago
Ideally, when I wake up at 5am and my head is racing with ideas, I head to my whiteboard in my home office. I write and sketch it all down and three hours later I fall asleep again, waking up at 10 refreshed. Most of such work has really been my best, with proposals that were refined and made it straight to top-management. In some interviews when the question came 'what do you need to work effectively' I have tentatively asked about this - no early meetings, etc... but there was always pushback. My last company, a standalone Vodafone Group R&D lab allowed all of us researchers these luxuries, but was later consolidated and streamlined. Is there any company that allows people to work this way? What are the best flexibilities that people have encountered? I'd be curious to know....
- pdwetz 12y ago
  As the article mentions, the best route I've found is through either working for yourself or freelancing. Other than that, it's almost the luck of the draw, as corporate rules/guidelines seem to vary over time (as do bosses).
- andywood 12y ago
  Microsoft has an informal but firm no meetings before 11 pseudo-policy. All the white boards you can eat. General freedom to come and go and work when you want, most of the time. YMMV.
  - RDeckard 12y ago
    What org? Never heard of this rule.
  - jacalata 12y ago
    >no meetings before 11 pseudo-policy Not in osg they don't.
    - snoman 12y ago
      Not in asg either.
earlz 12y ago
I really wonder what this says about children who wake up in the middle of the night, and the effect on parents. If you follow through with "everyone did segmented sleep", then at least the parents of children might be somewhat mismatched. Children wake up earlier, or take longer to wind back down to sleep. Is that still segmented sleep in the same vein? Maybe it was at one time natural for everyone to wake up at the same time basically, because they were so close together. Either way, the explicit no children "rule" for experimenting with segmented sleep is an interesting thing to think about. Of course, 9-5 jobs make it practically impossible anyway, which are assumed to go along with children in many cases
contingencies 12y ago
I have been changing routine to get some more exercise recently... I've started sailing again. The general routine is work the morning, sail the afternoon, sleep damn early (8:30PM?), wake up 2AM, work awhile, sleep again about 5AM, wake again about 8AM, eat, rinse, repeat. Yesterday I woke up early for a cancelled meeting, which broke my pattern. As a result, I sailed too early and too long .. and slept right through. This morning three dogs woke me up, apparently they were having sex. I have no doubt they will sleep again :)
bitL 12y ago
I noticed when I push myself a bit deeper into the night (I normally go sleeping at ~10pm), then at around midnight when I am already tired I have the best ideas for composing electronic music. If I stay awake, I often continue until 2-3am with an outline of a song and while very very tired, I often finish something surprisingly good and balanced so that I just need to refine/add "candy" around to finish the song. Basically I trade enhanced creativity for discomfort and feeling awful the next day, and it works surprisingly well.
- cJ0th 12y ago
  fellow electronic music producer here. For me it's not so much about being tired. It's rather that late in the evening I finally managed to mentally "recover" from work.
- bytecoin 12y ago
  Cool - have a link to your songs ?
smokey_the_bear 12y ago
I dunno, I haven't slept four hours straight since my baby was born, and this may be the least creative I've ever felt.
- chuckcode 12y ago
  I think being woken up rather than naturally reaching the end of a sleep cycle is very very different. When our baby was waking up a lot we were lucky to function much less do anything super creative. Article tries to make the case that historically people would have a period of wakefulness in the night based on historical writing. I'd like to see some more actual research before modifying my life and sleep habits as I'm not sure that this says anything more than sleep requirements are personal. My sense from working/living/traveling with lots of different folks is that sleep is just as personal as the types of foods you like to eat. Some people like napping, some don't. Some people like waking up early, some people like staying up early. The only real constants I see is that you absolutely have to get some and that the "experts" don't really know why...
  - ansible 12y ago
    I don't know that you, personally ought to be modifying your sleep schedule any. If you're doing something that works, that's fine. However, if you do go to sleep early (like 9pm), and wake up in the middle of the night, maybe it's not necessary to stress about that too much. If you can get something useful done, then you can do that, and then go back to sleep in a couple hours. I think the point is if you're feeling awake in the middle of the night, that isn't necessarily insomnia, and it isn't necessarily a problem. Maybe you can make it work and also get enough sleep to function well during the day.
- tacoman 12y ago
  Ha ha, exactly. I've been there a couple of times and it really made me reflect on what I'd do when I had the time and energy again.
- svachalek 12y ago
  I know your pain. However, I started going to bed for 12 hours a night knowing I'd be woken up a couple of times, and on the odd nights it didn't happen, I woke up on my own and experienced a state like this article talks about, awake but a little foggy, able to practically "see" the things I was thinking about in a way I never do in the daytime.
gwern 12y ago
Kind of a tenuous argument. Yes, some famous people do it now - but you could as well argue from, say, the Paris Review interviews that because so many great writers write first thing in the morning, you want block sleep so you don't get up late. It may also be natural, but lots of things are natural and don't cause greater creativity. And one may be able to cite personal anecdotes, but the causation could very easily be the other way: someone gets up because they have a burning idea, not because they got up and then also had a breakthrough. I think it would be much more compelling if they could point to even basic experimental verification; for example, showing greater solution rates to 'insight problems' in a segmented condition.
johnloeber 12y ago
I used to have a pretty irregular sleep pattern, and one thing I definitely noticed was the feeling of euphoria that comes with sleep-deprivation. If I stayed up deep into the night, I would feel great: energetic and ready to get things done. Such a state was also creatively useful: I did a lot of pretty good work in the deep of night. Somewhat paradoxically, I found it easier to focus at that hour. However, these benefits were only the case for light or mild sleep deprivation. If I was more sleep-deprived, e.g. 4 hours a night for a few days, then the pendulum would swing the other way and I would feel pretty useless and slow. I should also note that the sleep-deprived, energetic creative state was only useful for projects that I could do in a single push. If I could do some project from start to finish in a single creative burst, then an all-nighter wouldn't be a terrible way of getting it done. There would be few distractions, it'd be easy to get "flow" going, and I suspect that the euphoric, sleep-deprived state marginally reduce inhibitions, which can lead to better work. On the other hand, it's not that great for tackling a section of a larger project, which I think are better crafted slowly during the day, over the course of a few days.
- kirsebaer 12y ago
  Sleep deprivation increases dopamine, it's almost like taking amphetamine (Adderall). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.ht...
  - johnloeber 12y ago
    Interesting. I've never taken amphetamines, but I'm not surprised to find that this is the case.
  - niels_olson 12y ago
    Sleep deprivation causes dramatic deficits in the ability to attend to task, working memory, and mood stability. It is the exact opposite of adderall. More like coming off adderrall.
    - dbtc 12y ago
kabdib 12y ago
I'm regularly up at 4AM. At that time, I need to make a decision: Do I produce, or do I consume? If I produce, I write English or code. I can get in a couple hours of this before I need to wake up the rest of the house, and it's great. If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. Where did that time go? Doing reading is better, especially if I'm gronking down technical stuff that I've been meaning to read for a while. In any event, early morning "alone and quiet" time is pretty neat.
- elwell 12y ago
  > If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. I wish I could choose to turn off youtube and get things done. It's hard.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. Where did that time go? Doing something you enjoyed doing instead of what they force you to do everyday?
- hobo_mark 12y ago
  I've started to use one of those sleep tracking apps several weeks ago and I noticed that I invariably wake up around 4 as well, however only for what looks like around half an hour and without me having any recollection about it the next morning. I wonder if anyone else observed the same, in other words if this is "normal".
aaron695 12y ago
It totally blows my mind people still fall for this bullshit split sleep meme made up by an historian. So we take medical advice from historians now? I do know in the world of science that shift workers get a lot of cancer. Which is not split sleep exactly but close enough for me to not be forcing myself against nature to split sleep. Some creative people work all hours and some bodies are weird but don't buy into this is 'common and natural thing' meme.
- steveeq1 12y ago
  Correlation does not mean causation. Perhaps a lot of shift workers happen to be nurses and they work in an environment where it is more likely to contract cancer (from x-rays or whatever). I'm using this as an example. Also, I don't think it's "made up by a historian", it's more like a "historian commented on common behavior of our ancestors".
  - smt88 12y ago
    I have a friend who works at the American Cancer Society. They constantly have to refute the "[insert something here] causes cancer" myths. They do some pretty insanely large and in-depth studies on these things. They've even investigated the "your couch gives you cancer" myth. In the end, they say that smoking is by far the biggest risk factor for cancer. After that, there's a "three-legged stool" of obesity + sedentary lifestyle + poor diet, meaning those things compound one another. Genes also have a measurable influence on your likelihood of getting cancer. After that, very few things significantly increase your risk of cancer. A lot of it is just random. Most of the studies you see linking cancer to something are bullshit. My friend says you should be skeptical of anything shorter than 10 years and with fewer than 100,000 participants, and even then there are many other factors that go into gold-standard research.
- mytochar 12y ago
  How is shift working similar to split sleep? One is working arbitrary schedules, the other could be seen as "I go to bed at 8pm with the sun, and happen to wake up every night at like midnight to work for a few hours and then pass out again". They're entirely different shapes. Yes, it's reasonable to say we shouldn't take medical advice from historians; but, finding your most creative times of the day isn't really a medical thing, it's a "what works for me" or "what I've noticed about myself" sort of perspective. How do we measure creativity anyway?
elwell 12y ago
Reminds me of Psalm 63:6 - On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.
- johnnymonster 12y ago
  Interesting find
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
oliwary 12y ago
The wikipedia article for Polyphasic sleep is very interesting - apparently it it possible to reduce the required sleep to 2h per day, split into six 20-minute naps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
- seivadmas 12y ago
  I think this article was probably written by people who haven't actually tried it. I experimented with the Uberman sleep schedule myself as a student (i.e. 2 hours sleep a day, split into 20 minute naps). I stuck rigidly to the schedule over the course of three weeks but despite near-perfect discipline, it only got harder and harder. The hours between 1am to 5am were the hardest. I would stay awake because the program required it (and supposedly it gets easier as your body 'adjusts') but between these hours I was totally useless. I couldn't read because my eyes would unfocus, I had blackouts where I couldn't remember anything. Usually I would just sit and stare catatonically at a wall. I started breaking things and falling over due to malcoordination from the sleep deprivation and finally gave up after spending a night hallucinating that strange figures were appearing out of the wood patterns on my desk. I slept for 24 hours and felt like a completely different person after I woke up. So I encourage you to actually try this yourself, and see if it works. Just don't drive, operate heavy machinery or in fact do anything remotely risky during the experiment. Sleep deprivation can be dangerous. Personally, I think the 2 hours is enough theory is garbage.
  - johnnymonster 12y ago
    The concept was tested by Tim ferris in the book 4 hour body. He noted that its a hard thing to keep up with because you have to keep exactly on schedule or you will mess everything up and then you just end up sleeping for a day.
    - Goronmon 12y ago
      He noted that its a hard thing to keep up with because you have to keep exactly on schedule or you will mess everything up and then you just end up sleeping for a day. That sounds like one of those excuses people make for something that doesn't really work.
j_lev 12y ago
Anyone else here never have dreams? I can't remember having a dream for at least 18 years now. So even if I have the flexibility to sleep once at dusk and then work for a couple of hours, I'm not convinced I'll see any benefit.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  After a dermatologist prescription I suddenly dreamed every night very detailed and surreal dreams for three weeks. Weird brains are weird.
gtirloni 12y ago
You cannot wake up in the middle of the night feeling full of ideas if you've not been sleeping weel (and probably getting more hours of sleep than you really needed). When I'm on vacations, sleeping my ass off, I routinely wake up in the middle of the night, or 2-3 hours before my regular wake up time and I'm well prepared to think. Going back to traditional 8-5 work week, I'm glad I have a full night of sleep.

241 points by benbreen 12y ago

He's made a reasonable historical case for the commonness of a split cycle sleep. However, I wanted more evidence, so I looked to an ancestor: research on chimpanzees in wild seems to indicate that they start their days at dawn, and sleep mainly uninterrupted through the night... Did humans really diverge that much? I suppose further studies will tell. (After all, the creative differences seem undeniable, anecdotally...)

japhyr 12y ago

This is a wonderful reflection on the joys and productivity of getting up when you wake up, and running with your naturally wakeful energy while it lasts. My job is the only thing keeping me on a set schedule. When I retire, or if I make a move to freelancing full-time, I'm really curious to see what becomes of my schedule. I'll stay grounded in time somehow, but I'll also lose myself in time on a regular basis.

drbawb 12y ago
The article actually sounds a lot like my sleep schedule. I retire quite early (9-10PM) compared to my roommates who will game, drink, and socialize into the wee hours of the night. I have to be up around 6:30AM to do my morning routine. I often find myself waking up around 3:00 or 4:00 though. I just can't bring myself to "run with my naturally wakeful energy," though. Those next few hours until my alarm goes off are the most precious thing in the world. I bundle up, and try to get back to sleep. Usually I'm in an odd state of creative reflection, an almost "wakeful dreaming." It's more like wishful thinking, or a daydream, than an actual dream. My mind is too busy to sleep, but I can't let it run wild, I have to work in two hours. --- Then, just as I'm dozing off, my (sleep cycle aware) alarm clock goes off and tells me it's time to get up. Then I feel lethargic all day; spending my entire day anxious to get home so I can do the same thing all over again. --- My sleep cycle app tells me I'm a pretty decent sleeper (unless I've had a drink). Perhaps I'm just naturally a segmented sleeper; but what's a part-time student/full-time employee to do?
- mytochar 12y ago
  You regularly sleep nine and a half hours at night? Maybe waking up at 3 and 4 is when your body's ready to wake up, since it's been 6 or 7 hours.
- smt88 12y ago
  It honestly sounds like you have some anxiety issues that are interfering with your sleep. It may even be that you feel anxious about not sleeping (and therefore having a lethargic day), which keeps you up. You should certainly look into "sleep hygiene". If you religiously practice it, you may have better luck. Some of the recommendations are: no caffeine, no alcohol, get out of bed if you can't sleep, don't work in your bedroom, wake up at the same time every day. I can't remember the rest.

jumby 12y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

julianpye 12y ago

Ideally, when I wake up at 5am and my head is racing with ideas, I head to my whiteboard in my home office. I write and sketch it all down and three hours later I fall asleep again, waking up at 10 refreshed. Most of such work has really been my best, with proposals that were refined and made it straight to top-management. In some interviews when the question came 'what do you need to work effectively' I have tentatively asked about this - no early meetings, etc... but there was always pushback. My last company, a standalone Vodafone Group R&D lab allowed all of us researchers these luxuries, but was later consolidated and streamlined. Is there any company that allows people to work this way? What are the best flexibilities that people have encountered? I'd be curious to know....

pdwetz 12y ago
As the article mentions, the best route I've found is through either working for yourself or freelancing. Other than that, it's almost the luck of the draw, as corporate rules/guidelines seem to vary over time (as do bosses).
andywood 12y ago
Microsoft has an informal but firm no meetings before 11 pseudo-policy. All the white boards you can eat. General freedom to come and go and work when you want, most of the time. YMMV.
- RDeckard 12y ago
  What org? Never heard of this rule.
- jacalata 12y ago
  >no meetings before 11 pseudo-policy Not in osg they don't.
  - snoman 12y ago
    Not in asg either.

earlz 12y ago

I really wonder what this says about children who wake up in the middle of the night, and the effect on parents. If you follow through with "everyone did segmented sleep", then at least the parents of children might be somewhat mismatched. Children wake up earlier, or take longer to wind back down to sleep. Is that still segmented sleep in the same vein? Maybe it was at one time natural for everyone to wake up at the same time basically, because they were so close together. Either way, the explicit no children "rule" for experimenting with segmented sleep is an interesting thing to think about. Of course, 9-5 jobs make it practically impossible anyway, which are assumed to go along with children in many cases

contingencies 12y ago

I have been changing routine to get some more exercise recently... I've started sailing again. The general routine is work the morning, sail the afternoon, sleep damn early (8:30PM?), wake up 2AM, work awhile, sleep again about 5AM, wake again about 8AM, eat, rinse, repeat. Yesterday I woke up early for a cancelled meeting, which broke my pattern. As a result, I sailed too early and too long .. and slept right through. This morning three dogs woke me up, apparently they were having sex. I have no doubt they will sleep again :)

bitL 12y ago

I noticed when I push myself a bit deeper into the night (I normally go sleeping at ~10pm), then at around midnight when I am already tired I have the best ideas for composing electronic music. If I stay awake, I often continue until 2-3am with an outline of a song and while very very tired, I often finish something surprisingly good and balanced so that I just need to refine/add "candy" around to finish the song. Basically I trade enhanced creativity for discomfort and feeling awful the next day, and it works surprisingly well.

cJ0th 12y ago
fellow electronic music producer here. For me it's not so much about being tired. It's rather that late in the evening I finally managed to mentally "recover" from work.
bytecoin 12y ago
Cool - have a link to your songs ?

smokey_the_bear 12y ago

I dunno, I haven't slept four hours straight since my baby was born, and this may be the least creative I've ever felt.

chuckcode 12y ago
I think being woken up rather than naturally reaching the end of a sleep cycle is very very different. When our baby was waking up a lot we were lucky to function much less do anything super creative. Article tries to make the case that historically people would have a period of wakefulness in the night based on historical writing. I'd like to see some more actual research before modifying my life and sleep habits as I'm not sure that this says anything more than sleep requirements are personal. My sense from working/living/traveling with lots of different folks is that sleep is just as personal as the types of foods you like to eat. Some people like napping, some don't. Some people like waking up early, some people like staying up early. The only real constants I see is that you absolutely have to get some and that the "experts" don't really know why...
- ansible 12y ago
  I don't know that you, personally ought to be modifying your sleep schedule any. If you're doing something that works, that's fine. However, if you do go to sleep early (like 9pm), and wake up in the middle of the night, maybe it's not necessary to stress about that too much. If you can get something useful done, then you can do that, and then go back to sleep in a couple hours. I think the point is if you're feeling awake in the middle of the night, that isn't necessarily insomnia, and it isn't necessarily a problem. Maybe you can make it work and also get enough sleep to function well during the day.
tacoman 12y ago
Ha ha, exactly. I've been there a couple of times and it really made me reflect on what I'd do when I had the time and energy again.
svachalek 12y ago
I know your pain. However, I started going to bed for 12 hours a night knowing I'd be woken up a couple of times, and on the odd nights it didn't happen, I woke up on my own and experienced a state like this article talks about, awake but a little foggy, able to practically "see" the things I was thinking about in a way I never do in the daytime.

gwern 12y ago

Kind of a tenuous argument. Yes, some famous people do it now - but you could as well argue from, say, the Paris Review interviews that because so many great writers write first thing in the morning, you want block sleep so you don't get up late. It may also be natural, but lots of things are natural and don't cause greater creativity. And one may be able to cite personal anecdotes, but the causation could very easily be the other way: someone gets up because they have a burning idea, not because they got up and then also had a breakthrough. I think it would be much more compelling if they could point to even basic experimental verification; for example, showing greater solution rates to 'insight problems' in a segmented condition.

johnloeber 12y ago

I used to have a pretty irregular sleep pattern, and one thing I definitely noticed was the feeling of euphoria that comes with sleep-deprivation. If I stayed up deep into the night, I would feel great: energetic and ready to get things done. Such a state was also creatively useful: I did a lot of pretty good work in the deep of night. Somewhat paradoxically, I found it easier to focus at that hour. However, these benefits were only the case for light or mild sleep deprivation. If I was more sleep-deprived, e.g. 4 hours a night for a few days, then the pendulum would swing the other way and I would feel pretty useless and slow. I should also note that the sleep-deprived, energetic creative state was only useful for projects that I could do in a single push. If I could do some project from start to finish in a single creative burst, then an all-nighter wouldn't be a terrible way of getting it done. There would be few distractions, it'd be easy to get "flow" going, and I suspect that the euphoric, sleep-deprived state marginally reduce inhibitions, which can lead to better work. On the other hand, it's not that great for tackling a section of a larger project, which I think are better crafted slowly during the day, over the course of a few days.

kirsebaer 12y ago
Sleep deprivation increases dopamine, it's almost like taking amphetamine (Adderall). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.ht...
- johnloeber 12y ago
  Interesting. I've never taken amphetamines, but I'm not surprised to find that this is the case.
- niels_olson 12y ago
  Sleep deprivation causes dramatic deficits in the ability to attend to task, working memory, and mood stability. It is the exact opposite of adderall. More like coming off adderrall.
  - dbtc 12y ago

kabdib 12y ago

I'm regularly up at 4AM. At that time, I need to make a decision: Do I produce, or do I consume? If I produce, I write English or code. I can get in a couple hours of this before I need to wake up the rest of the house, and it's great. If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. Where did that time go? Doing reading is better, especially if I'm gronking down technical stuff that I've been meaning to read for a while. In any event, early morning "alone and quiet" time is pretty neat.

elwell 12y ago
> If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. I wish I could choose to turn off youtube and get things done. It's hard.
coldtea 12y ago
>If I consume, I watch a movie or surf or something, and I don't feel all that great in the end. Where did that time go? Doing something you enjoyed doing instead of what they force you to do everyday?
hobo_mark 12y ago
I've started to use one of those sleep tracking apps several weeks ago and I noticed that I invariably wake up around 4 as well, however only for what looks like around half an hour and without me having any recollection about it the next morning. I wonder if anyone else observed the same, in other words if this is "normal".

aaron695 12y ago

It totally blows my mind people still fall for this bullshit split sleep meme made up by an historian. So we take medical advice from historians now? I do know in the world of science that shift workers get a lot of cancer. Which is not split sleep exactly but close enough for me to not be forcing myself against nature to split sleep. Some creative people work all hours and some bodies are weird but don't buy into this is 'common and natural thing' meme.

steveeq1 12y ago
Correlation does not mean causation. Perhaps a lot of shift workers happen to be nurses and they work in an environment where it is more likely to contract cancer (from x-rays or whatever). I'm using this as an example. Also, I don't think it's "made up by a historian", it's more like a "historian commented on common behavior of our ancestors".
- smt88 12y ago
  I have a friend who works at the American Cancer Society. They constantly have to refute the "[insert something here] causes cancer" myths. They do some pretty insanely large and in-depth studies on these things. They've even investigated the "your couch gives you cancer" myth. In the end, they say that smoking is by far the biggest risk factor for cancer. After that, there's a "three-legged stool" of obesity + sedentary lifestyle + poor diet, meaning those things compound one another. Genes also have a measurable influence on your likelihood of getting cancer. After that, very few things significantly increase your risk of cancer. A lot of it is just random. Most of the studies you see linking cancer to something are bullshit. My friend says you should be skeptical of anything shorter than 10 years and with fewer than 100,000 participants, and even then there are many other factors that go into gold-standard research.
mytochar 12y ago
How is shift working similar to split sleep? One is working arbitrary schedules, the other could be seen as "I go to bed at 8pm with the sun, and happen to wake up every night at like midnight to work for a few hours and then pass out again". They're entirely different shapes. Yes, it's reasonable to say we shouldn't take medical advice from historians; but, finding your most creative times of the day isn't really a medical thing, it's a "what works for me" or "what I've noticed about myself" sort of perspective. How do we measure creativity anyway?

elwell 12y ago

Reminds me of Psalm 63:6 - On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.

johnnymonster 12y ago
Interesting find

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

oliwary 12y ago

The wikipedia article for Polyphasic sleep is very interesting - apparently it it possible to reduce the required sleep to 2h per day, split into six 20-minute naps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

seivadmas 12y ago
I think this article was probably written by people who haven't actually tried it. I experimented with the Uberman sleep schedule myself as a student (i.e. 2 hours sleep a day, split into 20 minute naps). I stuck rigidly to the schedule over the course of three weeks but despite near-perfect discipline, it only got harder and harder. The hours between 1am to 5am were the hardest. I would stay awake because the program required it (and supposedly it gets easier as your body 'adjusts') but between these hours I was totally useless. I couldn't read because my eyes would unfocus, I had blackouts where I couldn't remember anything. Usually I would just sit and stare catatonically at a wall. I started breaking things and falling over due to malcoordination from the sleep deprivation and finally gave up after spending a night hallucinating that strange figures were appearing out of the wood patterns on my desk. I slept for 24 hours and felt like a completely different person after I woke up. So I encourage you to actually try this yourself, and see if it works. Just don't drive, operate heavy machinery or in fact do anything remotely risky during the experiment. Sleep deprivation can be dangerous. Personally, I think the 2 hours is enough theory is garbage.
- johnnymonster 12y ago
  The concept was tested by Tim ferris in the book 4 hour body. He noted that its a hard thing to keep up with because you have to keep exactly on schedule or you will mess everything up and then you just end up sleeping for a day.
  - Goronmon 12y ago
    He noted that its a hard thing to keep up with because you have to keep exactly on schedule or you will mess everything up and then you just end up sleeping for a day. That sounds like one of those excuses people make for something that doesn't really work.

j_lev 12y ago

Anyone else here never have dreams? I can't remember having a dream for at least 18 years now. So even if I have the flexibility to sleep once at dusk and then work for a couple of hours, I'm not convinced I'll see any benefit.

agumonkey 12y ago
After a dermatologist prescription I suddenly dreamed every night very detailed and surreal dreams for three weeks. Weird brains are weird.

gtirloni 12y ago

You cannot wake up in the middle of the night feeling full of ideas if you've not been sleeping weel (and probably getting more hours of sleep than you really needed). When I'm on vacations, sleeping my ass off, I routinely wake up in the middle of the night, or 2-3 hours before my regular wake up time and I'm well prepared to think. Going back to traditional 8-5 work week, I'm glad I have a full night of sleep.