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Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

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Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#31

Post by davidw »

DaniFong wrote: post #24
pg wrote: post #4

Doing a startup seems to me more like playing soccer than running a marathon. Though you need to pace yourself, there are moments when you want to work super hard. So while being out of breath is not a sufficient condition for winning, it probably is a necessary one. Likewise for startups. Sleep deprivation is not a sufficient condition for winning, but empirically it seems to be a necessary one. Not long-term, obvio…

I'm pretty sure I agree. Certain problems require too much headstate to solve in smaller time quanta, and that at a certain point, when I'm bleary eyed, I lose enough caution to think daring thoughts. Part of it's just the adrenaline, too. And if you have friends goading you on, an allnighter can be pretty fun.

But taking a slightly longer term view - how is your productivity the next day? What's it average out to over a few days with a big loss of sleep?

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#32

Post by aswanson »

Prrometheus wrote: post #29
aswanson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What goes on (that you are allow to share) in those places that requires so much time and energy? I can see building things taking a lot of effort, but is it just for theater that people put in so many hours in those places?

In investment banking, you usually work on a small team of 3-6 people. The work day is very different depending on whether your team is currently working on a deal or is between deals and pitching clients. If your team is on a deal, then there could be honest-to-goodness work keeping your team busy for 100 hours a week. Tasks include preparing the materials used to market your client to potential investors (including…

Wow. Thanks for the insight. From the outside, I thought the I-bank business was the zenith. Looks a lot like my vision of hell, given that info.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#33

Post by danohuiginn »

pg wrote: post #27
nostrademons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sleep deprivation is not a sufficient condition for winning, but empirically it seems to be a necessary one." It doesn't seem to be a necessary one either, given the existence of counterexamples. Eg. Pierre Omidyar started E-bay while keeping his day job and adamantly refused to work more than 8 hours/day on it even after going full-time. One of the reasons he stepped back from a management position was that he didn…

Not everyone in a startup has to work hard, so long as some people do. But someone had to be carrying a pager when the servers went down, or eBay wouldn't still exist.

Being on call out of hours isn't the same as working (too) hard. 40-hour week, plus being paged a few times a month to deal with 4am crises, is perfectly reasonable. So is pulling the occasional all-nighter to meet a deadline.

The article is talking about something completely different: putting yourself in a state of constant sleep-deprivation through working ridiculous hours. And the author is right: that's not half as effective as people claim.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#34

Post by danohuiginn »

davidw wrote: post #31
DaniFong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I agree. Certain problems require too much headstate to solve in smaller time quanta, and that at a certain point, when I'm bleary eyed, I lose enough caution to think daring thoughts. Part of it's just the adrenaline, too. And if you have friends goading you on, an allnighter can be pretty fun.

But taking a slightly longer term view - how is your productivity the next day? What's it average out to over a few days with a big loss of sleep?

Depends how you manage it. When I do this, I go to sleep mid-afternoon the next day, and sleep for 12+ hours. When I wake up after that (early morning), I feel absolutely fantastic.

The end result is probably only about 20-25 hours work in two days - i.e. not much more than normal working days. The advantage isn't in the total hours, it's in having the same problems rattling around in your head for a long time.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#35

Post by sanj »

pg wrote: post #28
sanj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's how I interpreted it, but I appreciate the clarification. But I still disagree. Anecdotally, I've found that coding for 6 hours a days gets more features implemented and bugs fixed than coding for 14 hours a day. The loss of mental acuity, clarity and creativity (again, this is for me, and anecdotal) is simply too high a price to pay.

Anecdotally, I've found that coding for 6 hours a days gets more features implemented and bugs fixed than coding for 14 hours a day. Sure, in the long term. But when you have a big demo or a customer deadline coming up in 2 days, or a server crashing right now, it often pays to keep working past 6 hours.

Then the injury analogy still holds.

I hold up the Schilling's bloody sock as Exhibit A:

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/6948862/

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#37

Post by Retric »

neilc wrote: post #20

So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal. You end up with just 77% of your available peak. Uh, not quite: x(1.1) + x(0.7) != 0.77(2x). Reminds me of the fuzzy math in DHH's startup revenue calculations...

I think it might be more accurate to say work per day = (x(1.1) + N * x(1.1 * .7))/(n+1) = x(1.1 + n * .77) / (n+1)

So as your number of days approaches infinity average work / day approaches 77% of your old work per day. Or on your second day you only get 77% of your normal work day done.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#38

Post by mhartl »

dissenter wrote: post #25
mhartl wrote: post #9

This might be better titled " Chronic sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor", but the point is well-made. Being sleep-deprived is like being drunk: you're not competent to realize how incompetent you've become.

>This might be better titled "Chronic sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor" The original title is better. It makes perfect sense. It expresses the same meaning. He is clearly referring to the phenomenon of sleep deprivation and not to a single instance. It's clear from the title, and the article even explicitly points this out. He isn't writing legalese. He doesn't have to gird every sentence against being taken…

Please tone it down. I made a suggestion for adding one word to the title, and said it might be better. That is a flimsy pretext for such a vitriolic response.

The first sentence wasn't even my main point; the second sentence was. You write, "He doesn't have to gird every sentence against being taken out of context and nitpicked." Extend me the same courtesy.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#39

Post by Prrometheus »

aswanson wrote: post #32
Prrometheus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In investment banking, you usually work on a small team of 3-6 people. The work day is very different depending on whether your team is currently working on a deal or is between deals and pitching clients. If your team is on a deal, then there could be honest-to-goodness work keeping your team busy for 100 hours a week. Tasks include preparing the materials used to market your client to potential investors (including…

Wow. Thanks for the insight. From the outside, I thought the I-bank business was the zenith. Looks a lot like my vision of hell, given that info.

It is what it is. It is cool to work with hard-nosed, business-minded, sharp people. I enjoyed sitting in on meetings between Private Equity funds and the executives of the companies we were trying to raise money for. I learned the function of all the players in the financial market and I got to stay in nice New York hotels on someone else's dime. I made good money. But it wasn't for me, so it was slowly wearing away my health and sanity.

Re: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

#40

Post by maw »

sanj wrote: post #35
pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I've found that coding for 6 hours a days gets more features implemented and bugs fixed than coding for 14 hours a day. Sure, in the long term. But when you have a big demo or a customer deadline coming up in 2 days, or a server crashing right now, it often pays to keep working past 6 hours.

Then the injury analogy still holds. I hold up the Schilling's bloody sock as Exhibit A: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/6948862/

Curt Schilling probably would have had problems in subsequent years had he pitched in the playoffs in 2004 or not.
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