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Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#81

Post by rajjalan »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #62

Tangentially related, I am regularly waken up by garbage trucks at ~2am and ~4:30am, and then sometimes again at ~6am. (I live in San Francisco). It's becoming unbearable. Unfortunately there are a couple of commercial activities nearby, and my understanding is that there's no way to force these trucks to come at a more decent time. Any of you have any idea on how to fix this? Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but no…

Something like this (it has helped me): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HD0ELFA

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#82

Post by cortesoft »

gascan wrote: post #34
macNchz wrote: post #15

The author's experience is very similar to my own–my parents called me 'the sleepless wonder' when I was a kid, and by high school getting out of bed for morning classes was excruciating. In college I mostly chose classes that started later in the day and wound up doing much better academically. Since college I've made a point of taking jobs that offer flexible hours, which thankfully seems to be increasingly common.…

1) I was much like you. My performance in college suffered as I couldn't rouse in the morning. I recently discovered I actually did have a medical problem affecting sleep quality (partially obstructed airway from childhood injury). Can't help but wonder how things would be different if I'd figured it out sooner. 2) Had a kid, and sleeping in late is simply no longer an option. Which makes me think that despite how I…

Right? I was going to say, all this shifting schedule stuff is great, but kids don't care about your schedule.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#83

Post by kyteland »

wpietri wrote: post #3
dtien wrote: post #2

As someone who also has atypical sleep patterns ( late sleeper, early riser ), there were some interesting points in here. I know there's been research done as well on the number of hours of sleep required rather than 'when' it occurs, but those haven't seem to have reached a consensus yet. I will say some of these articles sometimes read satirically. Notably, they have a diagnosis for people who can't sleep at 'norm…

Yeah, I'm suspicious of putting people into big buckets based on an easily observable characteristic. I think it erases useful complexity. Personally, I shifted from being a night owl to an early riser years ago. I think it had a lot to do with a complex series of changes I made in my life. Trying to force it by just changing my wake time wouldn't have done anything good, but improving other things eventually resulte…

I shifted to being an early riser around 30. All it really took was for me to move into a place with unobstructed east-facing windows. Within a matter of months I was waking up at sunrise and bedtime had shifted from 2am to 10pm without any effort on my part.

Honestly, the only difference in my day to day has been when I do stuff. I'm still sleeping the exact same amount. I'm not more/less rested or alert during the day. I just do the same stuff in the morning that I'd have done in the evening previously.

The only benefit is that I no longer use an alarm. Work has flex hours and I don't have to be in until 10am, so I just wake up whenever I wake up and don't worry about it because there's plenty of time.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#84

Post by dang »

learnstats2 wrote: post #55
danvasquez29 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an early riser myself, what bothers me about this is that I personally feel like I'm only talking about because someone else is making a big deal out of it. I don't think I go out of my way to bring the topic up, but I'm constantly getting people saying things like "omg I saw when you sent that email/made that commit/whatever, do you ever sleep", and then I gotta say something like "well I was up at 5 so I knocked…

It should be a bigger deal to late-risers because, you know, a typical schedule of work and socialising isn't compatible with rising late. This is particularly galling because it appears that late-risers are not uncommon. Early risers speaking on the issue don't have anything interesting to say.

That last bit is obviously not true, and please don't post polarizing comments on divisive comments, a.k.a. flamebait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#85

Post by yqx »

coldtea wrote: post #42
elhudy wrote: post #26

>According to Dr. Walker, about 40 percent of the population are morning people, 30 percent are evening people, and the remainder land somewhere in between. I'm not a sleep expert or a neuroscientist, but I take issue with being branded into a sleep-band that is "hard-written" into my DNA. I perform at my worst when I wake at times other than my current habit allows for - whether that is early or late. I don't believ…

It's not some random commenter that assumed the cronotype though, it's scientists. So, you can take it with them. Or you could an outlier, but it's not like this flexibility you mention is statistically true for most people. What has been studied is statistically true.

> It's not some random commenter that assumed the cronotype though, it's scientists.

However, what is actually known about the human body is often a lot more fuzzy and uncertain than how the popular press, or sometimes scientists, would have use believe. If the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article on the chronotype is to be believed there is plenty of room for believing that environment and habits play a role in your Chronotype as is the case for most behaviours.

> The causes and regulation of chronotypes, including developmental change, individual propensity for a specific chronotype, and flexible versus fixed chronotypes have yet to be determined. However, research is beginning to shed light on these questions, such as the relationship between age and chronotype.

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

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#86

Post by enceladus_ice »

medell wrote: post #24
enceladus_ice wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently listened to an interview with Matthew Walker (author of "Why We Sleep" book mentioned in article). Dr. Walker stated the scientific consensus is now trending toward historical biphasic sleep being a social trend rather than how we're "supposed" to sleep.

Matthew Walker's excerpt on biphasic sleep: https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3524 TL;DR: There's evidence of cultures untouched by electricity sleeping 7 hours at night with a 30-60min afternoon nap, which he calls biphasic sleep, with some tribes switching to monophasic in cooler months. All humans have a hardwired dip in midafternoon alertness.

True, I was referring to waking up in the middle of the night for an hour or two and then going back to sleep.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#87

Post by gnicholas »

whorleater wrote: post #53
gnicholas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, of course, some early risers who don't do this. But yeah, the ones who do are pretty unbearable. I had a neighbor who boasted of how she woke up at 4:45a to work out. Of course, she fell asleep in front of the TV at 8p...

>I had a neighbor who boasted of how she woke up at 4:45a to work out. Of course, she fell asleep in front of the TV at 8p... Being sanctimonious is annoying, but that sounds like she's getting the right amount of sleep

And if she had bragged about getting the right amount of sleep, I wouldn't have cared. But she just went on and on about the superiority of early risers: how this successful VC or that successful CEO wakes up very early, and how in fact most successful people in SV wake up early.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#88

Post by pseudalopex »

danvasquez29 wrote: post #37
mmaunder wrote: post #22

What really bugs me is the self-righteousness of the early riser. There's definitely some kind of power dynamic going on. Perhaps the joke should be: How do you know if someone gets up at 5am? Because they tell you.

as an early riser myself, what bothers me about this is that I personally feel like I'm only talking about because someone else is making a big deal out of it. I don't think I go out of my way to bring the topic up, but I'm constantly getting people saying things like "omg I saw when you sent that email/made that commit/whatever, do you ever sleep", and then I gotta say something like "well I was up at 5 so I knocked…

"I was up at 5 so I knocked it out before I drove in" comes across differently than "I was up at 5, but I go to bed around 9:30, so it evens out".

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#89

Post by sixstringtheory »

pg_bot wrote: post #25

I'm the only person I've encountered that naturally runs on a 25 hour clock. I get the same amount of sleep per day (~8 hours) but I follow it with 17 hours of wakefulness so my clock moves forward by an hour every day. To my knowledge there are no adverse health effects, but it's certainly out of the ordinary. I often wonder if more people are like me since sleep problems are so common, but they cannot follow their…

I've come to the same conclusion about myself, but I pegged it closer to 26 or 27 hours. For a while I've thought about just letting it rotate through the 24 hour day, to the point that I'm awake all night and sleep all day, until it realigns, to see what would happen. Sounds exactly what you're doing, though. I'm scared that it would have adverse psychological effects... and no doubt it would make working in the "real world" more difficult. Interested to hear more about your experience, how long you've been doing it, etc.

In the end, my wife is a lark, so I'd rather be awake with her :)

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#90

Post by nradov »

mschuster91 wrote: post #78

I believe a big part of the problem is that the old larks, and with them their belief about lark superiority, simply don't retire as they used to, thus keeping young people and fresh ideas from moving up the "chain of command". Being a hard night owl myself, I'm happy to work at a place with flexible hours, but then again most of my company is <40-50 years of age. People in BigCos often aren't as lucky and to make it…

This is the worst sort of ageism. In my professional experience there is no correlation between youth and fresh ideas.

Big companies with competent leaders are perfectly capable of rapid change when survival is at stake. The classic example is the pivot from desktop software toward the Internet that Bill Gates led at Microsoft.

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