Couple of mundane (non-data-based) suggestions plus a weird one. Ask your wife about your behavior. (Although this could open up a can of worms (or emotional whuppass) especially since she's probably twice as tired as you are. Just be regular in your self-awareness. Check in on yourself more frequently. Awareness can access data you could never formalize. Memorize something that's intricate enough to not to become au…
Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#12There was a great comment/post on lesswrong.com a while back on this but my phone isn't up to to the site. Do a test or a suite of tests on a daily basis that test intelligence/problem solving skills/reaction time and track your results. Offline, Sudoku, crosswords, other newspaper things but I'm guessing they're pretty noisy. IIRC the mensa.dk website has quite a good test. Dual n back seems likely to give fast and…
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#13Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#14Keep notebooks/journals. Sleep isn't an exact science, so don't expect an exact answer. Some people can live on 6 hours of sleep and be fully alert. Some people need 9. Personally, I fluctuate. I keep notebooks on subjects I'm learning and use journals to reflect on my overall progress. This self-assessment helps me to not only retain what I learn, but to give me a pulse on my progress: am I in a slow month or am I o…
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#15I think there are a couple things to consider. Our son was born while I was working at a startup. In my opinion, for the first few months, I was definitely functioning with less sleep than ever before. The regular 8 became a broken 6, just as you say, but I felt fresh in the mornings and didn't nod off during the afternoon. Basically, I felt "normal." I don't know if it's adrenaline or some other biological phenomeno…
The first bit is weird though huh? I wonder if it has been properly studied? I know there are studies on the hormones in the mother and her ability to cope on small amounts of sleep. Is there anything similar for guys?
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#16Keep notebooks/journals. Sleep isn't an exact science, so don't expect an exact answer. Some people can live on 6 hours of sleep and be fully alert. Some people need 9. Personally, I fluctuate. I keep notebooks on subjects I'm learning and use journals to reflect on my overall progress. This self-assessment helps me to not only retain what I learn, but to give me a pulse on my progress: am I in a slow month or am I o…
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#17I think there are a couple things to consider. Our son was born while I was working at a startup. In my opinion, for the first few months, I was definitely functioning with less sleep than ever before. The regular 8 became a broken 6, just as you say, but I felt fresh in the mornings and didn't nod off during the afternoon. Basically, I felt "normal." I don't know if it's adrenaline or some other biological phenomeno…
Thanks. I'll watch out for that. It sounds a lot like what I've experienced to date and the drop off you describe is post of what I'm worried about. The first bit is weird though huh? I wonder if it has been properly studied? I know there are studies on the hormones in the mother and her ability to cope on small amounts of sleep. Is there anything similar for guys?
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#18Things change with children, but the human brain was trained for that situation for long time.
Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#19Re: Ask HN: How can you measure your own mental performance?
#20Just use some simple memory tests, now I think they could be very good indicators of performance. Under extreme stress I begun forgetting things, for eg. short term memory for numbers was almost completely gone.
Some non-direct measurements are just daily behaviour; do you lose your temper easier or do you just try get isolated.
Been there, done that. I would rather pay attention on just mental health and daily physical exercise than mental performance, things will normalize within a year anyway when the kid grows up and sleeps more steadily.