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

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291–300 of 309 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what possible way? Biking or walking to work is "dreary and sad"? Spending less time cooking so you can spend more time doing exciting and fun activities is "dreary and sad"? Pooping at the office is "dreary and sad"? What kind of life do you lead where being stuck in traffic, daily meal preparation, and shitting on your own toilet is a constant thrill ride?

My commute to work is 10 minutes. I poop and shower at home, in my own lovely bathroom. I cook elaborate meals at home and serve them to people I love. I guess I'm just surprised when people don't share the same joy of cooking. Or, for that matter, taking an excellent bowel movement in one's own toilet.

> taking an excellent bowel movement in one's own toilet

On the other hand, as the saying goes: I make a nickel, boss makes a dime; that's why I poop on company time.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also used to feel this way. What worked for me is to not to do some of these things. For example, I got a robot vacuum cleaner and a robot mop. For any additional cleaning, I have a cleaning lady that comes every once in a while. This saves me a couple of hours of cleaning each month. If the car breaks, or something needs to be done around the house, I hire someone to do it. Groceries are delivered according to a s…

> Labour cost are so low here, and salaries in IT are so high Where’s this magical place?

Cluj-Napoca, Romania. However, I am from the Netherlands where the same advice applied a couple of years back.

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

#293

I recognize the thrust of this argument, and anecdotally agree with it from my experience,but it's not practical advice. Work 12 hours, spend at least 30 minutes each way commuting,work out, prepare and eat meals, and you're at pretty nearly 15 hours, without counting preparing for work. Sure,you have time for sleeping 8 hours,but only if you eschew any personal life and find your work sufficiently exciting to not se…

How and why would you work for 12 hours in a day? I don't understand why anyone with choose that life for an extended period of time.

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

#295
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you all the way! I hear people talk about optimizing one's day to be more productive and "get more done in your day" so often...but honestly, between work, family responsibilities, working out a little in the gym, getting involved in side projects (either "working on the car", or working on side dev project), maybe some civic community involvement, social visits (the occasional beer with a buddy), etc...it j…

Automation never results in more leisure. It results in more specialized work and increased workloads. The sentiment expressed in the first line is why I intend to stay working remotely for as long as possible. I hated the fact I saw a drab grey cubicle farm more than my house and family.

Once you go remote it's hard to go back. I have been remote for 4 years now and I can't imagine doing the whole commute / office thing ever again. I don't even care if they pay more, nope. No way.

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

#296
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But do parents think they're protecting kids by driving them instead of letting them take the bus? They're going to get bullied mercilessly as soon as they get to school anyway. Not a parent but I wouldn't expect to drive children to protect them from bullies but child kidnappers or other random dangers. I'm pretty sure that's why my parents drove me too.

Is that stuff really a concern? How many random child kidnappers are there? Don't children go out to play? And then walk home alone from wherever they hung out? I thought Stranger Danger was sort of a joke for many areas now. Especially considering people on HN are usually middle class at minimum. I never had any issues walking to the bus stop starting in kindergarten. Though granted I almost never walked alone. Usua…

I never said it's a rational fear! I have never walked home alone after hanging out nor gone out to play alone except in our backyard.

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of "works" is suspicious to me. If you're saying that in the short term, short-term thinking works, sure. If you're in college and are doing a bunch of work that doesn't matter to deadlines that are entirely made up, sure, you can get away with it. You claim that doctors do fine without enough sleep, but even doctors don't claim that any more. Doctor friends tell me it's a big focus for reform. [1] An…

I don't mean to claim doctors do fine without enough sleep. Doctor friends I have spoken to talk about this talk about the reforms but it is not uniformly positive. I am trying to posit that the claim that we function better with more sleep is true. But that claim is made in a vacuum. Person A operates at 100% well rested. But operating at 80% or 60% is more valuable than 0% if averaged out over time. So I can write…

If you are throwing away your tired-brain code a week later, godspeed. Do what you like. But if you are checking in that code and making other people deal with it, then quality becomes much more important. If you write 1200 lines of code instead of 800, then you have something that has 50% more maintenance cost and 50% more bugs. (And it's probably worse given that you were tired and thinking with a short-term mindset.) So hell yes, it matters to me whether my coworkers are putting long-term value above short-term incentives.

> I'm just tired of everyone being absolutely fascinated by this idea that resting is better than not resting. Isn't that just obvious?

It is not in fact obvious. So many places reward time spent more than quality work. Just today at a meetup we were talking about how to shift people away from damaging and expensive heroics to investing in not creating such big problems that you need work-all-night heroes. The industry is notorious for death marches and work-all-the-time startups. And it's also notorious for buggy, low-productivity, high-tech-debt code bases and giant rewrites caused by years of accumulated short-term thinking.

If it's obvious to you, skip over the articles. Not everything has to be for you.

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

#298
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…

>it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life

Sleep is a vital part of life. You are not missing out on life if you sleep--you are living.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation never results in more leisure. It results in more specialized work and increased workloads. The sentiment expressed in the first line is why I intend to stay working remotely for as long as possible. I hated the fact I saw a drab grey cubicle farm more than my house and family.

Once you go remote it's hard to go back. I have been remote for 4 years now and I can't imagine doing the whole commute / office thing ever again. I don't even care if they pay more, nope. No way.

Amazingly enough, this is exactly how I feel. There's no chance for raises, although the company have a lot of opportunities to make more money, but I can't deal with the commute and office politics ever again.

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

#300
This is the first time I've ever read about sleep problems caused by a simple glass of wine before bed. About ten years ago some study came out linking red wine to heart health, and I remember one smug kid at school making fun of the Mormons because the article had just "proven their religion wrong". Meanwhile health organizations were recommending you not start drinking because it's also addictive. I've heard that the drinking culture in the US has changed lately, as it is being seen as less and less healthy (I've been abroad for about 5 years).
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