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Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

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Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#11

It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves. That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on i…

You're being melodramatic.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#12
post #11

It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves. That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on i…

You're being melodramatic.

Great to hear you have an opinion on the way I express my opinion. Do you also have an opinion on the matter itself?

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#13

It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves. That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on i…

The trouble with Scribd is it tries to legitimize PDF for browsing. We'd be better served by a tool that rescues the text and images from the boneheaded universal print-derived layout that assumes a very high resolution portrait display and pointlessly huge margins. Google has a lot of trouble with this, but bless them for trying.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#14

It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves. That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on i…

I quit clicking on them because every single time I tried to load a Scribd page Firefox would lock up and then crash. I really hate them.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#15
post #6

Nothing worked until I started exercising. Quality of sleep greatly improved.

I exercise regularly (by virtue of my job), but I found that waking up at the same time every day helped greatly. My work switched to winter hours (so that we're still going to work with some modicum of sunlight), but I found myself still waking up at 6am regardless of whether my alarm was set or not.

In total I must have gotten 12 hours of sleep over the weekend due to family being in from out of town, but I still got up and worked a full day without an ounce of tiredness. It wasn't until around 10:30pm that my body demanded sleep.

I also noted that I have similar creative productivity at 6am as I used to at 1am when I was on night-owl hours. So I now use my extra morning time to get writing done that I find hard to get to later in the day.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#16
post #9

I haven't read the whole guide yet but on page 8 it mentions polyphasic sleep (with annotation that majority of people who try it fail). Isn't polyphasic considered a popular hoax? As far as I remember, mentioned in the presentation dr Wozniak actually believes it simply doesn't work. Also, I've read a few blogs of people who tried it and failed (some of them appeared on HN) and don't recall a single person that succ…

It's not so much that it doesn't work, but that it's at extreme odds with the rest of society. I can't say much for the Uberman, having tried it three times so far and failing each time, but I did do the Everyman for a period of a couple months with no ill effects. I tried again a while ago but I just can't keep it up when school is going (which was my reason for stopping before).

I'm not going to go dig up some research (though the PDF seems to agree we're at least biphasic) so you're free to take this as opinion, but I'm sure I've read some out there suggesting that humans are naturally polyphasic and evolved that way in the ancestral environment. A just-so story could be that those who slept less or in bursts avoided deadly danger better than those who got 8 solid hours each night.

There's also this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Wright_%28sleep_deprivatio... whose theory is roughly that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have different sleep requirements, and you can operate on one while the other rests.

Edit: I should mention that my most successful sleep pattern (that is, me feeling my best) was with free-running sleep.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#18
Wanted to correct a mistake I noticed: Seth Roberts (as far as I know) has never documented trying a raw, whole foods diet. If you search his blog, you'll see that he has been tracking other things to see how they effect his sleep. Eating animal fat, standing on one leg, and sunlight are all examples.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:blog.sethroberts.net+sle...

edit: Maybe he's referring to this post? http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2008/06/09/less-carbs-better...

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#19
post #9

I haven't read the whole guide yet but on page 8 it mentions polyphasic sleep (with annotation that majority of people who try it fail). Isn't polyphasic considered a popular hoax? As far as I remember, mentioned in the presentation dr Wozniak actually believes it simply doesn't work. Also, I've read a few blogs of people who tried it and failed (some of them appeared on HN) and don't recall a single person that succ…

People who say they managed to pull it off for a month or two keep popping up. They could be just pulling our leg of course. When I suspected the people who say they've successfully done polyphasic sleep are just making up stories aloud in IRC, someone on the channel told me they'd done polyphasic sleep for several weeks.

I'd consider polyphasic sleep as working if after within two weeks of starting the schedule a significant number of people could start going instantly into REM sleep when they nap and could stay reasonably alert and functional with these naps for several weeks. This should be easy enough to test in a lab.

My guesses are that it can really work (but I'm not sure if it can work for most or for not that many people) and that it's likely to impair mental performance a bit even after successful adaptation. I haven't read many polyphasic sleep accounts from people involved in seriously brainpower and creativity intensive work like mathematics research. Also, I'm a bit wary of cutting away non-REM sleep, since it seems to be the time when the body heals best. I keep thinking that the body might be using the NREM sleep to clean out cells turning into cancer in addition to healing wounds and fighting sickness, which would make long-term NREM deprivation life-expectancy shortening.

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