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Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

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211–220 of 309 posts

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation has been happening for the last century. And what has happened to work weeks/hours? Oh thats right, they went drastically down.

Too glib; they've been holding pretty steady at 8 hours, mainly due to regulation. Other work has increased hours, such as in many areas of health care, for example. Many folks also patch together multiple jobs in order to achieve a livable income and can work upwards of 12-16 hour days. I know several, personally. Keynes predicted we'd be down to 3 or 4 hours a day by now, but that never happened due (partly) to the…

How many hours do people work, really, though. If management became more lenient of people going home when the day's work is over, I imagine we would be a lot closer to 4hrs/day.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#212
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you have kids, then you realize how much time you had to just have a life...

Kid is 7 weeks old and have literally just found 40 minutes to work on a side project for the first time in a week.

It gets better after a few years mate, I generally have a few hours at night now to spend time with the missus, game/watch movies, do writing/side projects. This is with a 3.5 and 2 year old.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#213
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that particular scenario is false only when there is no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?). More importantly, it wasn't just a "study" that figured out the law of gravitation.

> no air resistance (nowhere on this planet?) In 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott repeated the experiment on the lunar surface with a hammer and a feather. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Leaning_Tower_of_P... (includes a link to a video clip; jump to about 0:35).

I am aware of that famous experiment on the moon. However, my point was that the law of gravitation was developed centuries before such an experiment could possibly be performed.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#214
post #4

I don't you can generalize things like this. I am sure there are people who can get by on 6 hours or less naturally. But the problem starts when people who need more try force themselves to sleep less. I have done a lot experimentation with this and had to accept that the only sustainable way for me is to sleep around 8 hours every night. It would be cool if I could make do with 4 but it's just not in me.

The point is that people who claim to function on six are unable to correctly judge their capabilities and are most likely wrong about that claim.

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Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#215
post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

Totally on board with this. I'm currently looking for a 1/2 time contract gig, mostly because that's about all I want to work in conjunction with running a household and raising two kids.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#216
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had so much shit that just sucked in my life the first 21 years of it. I always had sinus infections, I would constantly have what my friends and I call "poo-brain," where you just have slug thoughts and can't get your shit in order and your speech might even slur. Depression. Etc. Then I started taking fexofenadine (allegra) and fluticasone (nasonex) every day. After 2 weeks, nearly every problem I had vanished. N…

Might I ask what kind of climate you live in? I am assuming it's not an arid one.

This was true in South Carolina, Houston Texas, Tokyo Japan, Ningbo China, Taipei Taiwan, and San Francisco CA. Many are hot and humid, and Tokyo/Houston is lousy with tree sperm, but I didn't think it'd have followed me to SF. I think I just have a bad nose. Or I'm addicted to anti histamines now.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#217
post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

for me personally the bigger issue is the actual 9-5ish work hours. I'm way more productive later in the day, so if the schedule would allow something like a Noon-4 pm/break/8 pm -midnight type breakdown I'm all for that. this is sometimes possible with telecommuting arrangements, whenever I'm able to do that I'm more productive, more rested and feel like my personal work/life balance is better.

I used to be kind of the 'leader' in flex hours where I worked, and I worked a lot (too much I think).

  Then I got layed off.

  Remember, its not how many hours you work, its how many hours you work when the boss is there.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#218
post #96
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people feel that humans have evolved over millions of years to do well in hunter-gatherer tribes and we have not genetically adapted yet in 6,000? years of civilization. If we think returning some habits of hunter-gatherer tribes would be beneficial, then we need to know what they are/were and not just wild-ass guess based on the Nobel Savage myth.

Because of your question mark, I decided to look it up. Agriculture began about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. It's not much different than 6,000 years and I only mention it because of your question mark. Here is a link, if you're curious: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/development-of-ag... It's worth adding that there were still some nomadic traits, initially. They'd plant and move on, hunting as they went,…

I was thinking that the beginning of writing as the start of civilization, but the start of agriculture could work. With a bit more thought, the beginning of cities (greater than, say, 10,000 people) might be a better one.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're approaching productivity from the wrong angle. It's not about producing more, and especially not producing more while tired... it's about doing less unnecessary work. This requires thought, and is easier with a full night's sleep. https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro...

However you define productivity, I still work the same number of hours in a given day, so whether it's more output or better output, it's still all the same to me. There's no reason for me to invest the extra hours in sleep to improve it when I can invest that time in things I enjoy. I don't see how that changes anything I said. My work is defined by hours, not goals, not lines of code, but hours.

You can negotiate a shorter workweek and then get extra time. And that's easier if you're productive.

I've done it, and others have as well.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#220
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies spent much less than 40h/week "working" and had more leisure time than we do. It's just recent history that's an anomaly...

Hunter gatherer societies also weren't paying for cell phones, and internet, and mortgages/rent. I'm sure you could get by working part time for 15 hours a week if you gave up all of your modern conveniences and lived outdoors in a tent, but it wouldn't be very enjoyable.

> I'm sure you could get by working part time for 15 hours a week if you gave up all of your modern conveniences and lived outdoors in a tent, but it wouldn't be very enjoyable.

It’s interesting you’d say that. I agree on average, but the enjoyment in that lifestyle would be hard to imagine in ours. I don’t think it’s hard to see our perception of pleasurable things is different from frequency.

Frankly I think there are only small, incremental improvements to happiness possible after modern healthcare and plumbing. Which are, granted, still extremely expensive where I live.

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