I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule a…
I’d say that the idea that we can recover wasted time sleeping is predicated on the idea that sleep is not a useful thing to do with our time. I think the current consensus is that there is actually many different things that our bodies and minds do while sleeping, so you couldn’t isolate one benefit of sleep and replicate it, you’d have to replicate five or ten different benefits of sleep, or more. If you want to re…
+1 to a maid. You can get someone to clean, do laundry, and possibly cook 2x a week for less than $10k ($200 week * 50 weeks) a year in a mid-sized metro. Possibly even cheaper.
Any couple that bickers about cleaning at all should try a maid before a divorce or couples counseling.
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ For those interested in someone who created a refutation to Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep"
I wouldn't say this is refuting even a minority of claims in the book. It appears to be a thorough fact check of a small percentage of claims, some of which is going after the author over wording and inconsistencies. It's fair criticism, but by no means invalidates a majority of the information regarding sleep that Walker presents
Except there are cases where Walker went so far as to remove portions of a graph to support his argument. This kind of manipulation shouldn't be allowed to stand and it's frustrating (though not surprising) to see a book that relies on this sort of dishonesty get so much uncritical attention and praise. I can't put it any better than Andrew Gelman:
"If the data didn’t matter, then why did you include them in your damn book in the first place? If the removal of the bar from the graph didn’t matter, then why did you remove the damn bar?"
"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker summarizes quite a lot of research on sleep. It leaves little doubt - we currently know of no safe way to significantly cut down sleep. I haven't seen the research presented in that book being refuted.
This 100%. I've read the book twice, coming back to certain chapters more than twice, because it's dense with information. It's scary really. The single most impactful thing you can do as a human for your life is to prioritize 8 hours of sleep per night, full stop.
Guzey had another blog post on Matthew Walker's sleep book posted on HN a while back. I thought it was a bad faith critique, from my own biophysics perspective. We had some back and forth, guzey seemed nice & respectful enough, but I still had my misgivings about the critique. Sleep is very much an open question.
HN seems to really love maximizing cognition and the overall efficiency of their life. That said, if you want to try this experiment yourself, know this: sleep also affects mood, memory, and longevity (e.g. dementia). Chronic sleep deprivation is not good for you.
"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker summarizes quite a lot of research on sleep. It leaves little doubt - we currently know of no safe way to significantly cut down sleep. I haven't seen the research presented in that book being refuted.
An educational and insightful book, but it had me losing sleep because I got so anxious on needing more sleep. Talk about irony!
I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule a…
> I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time 8 hours - I wish! Since starting freelancing full time I've been lucky enough to not need to get up at any particular time and ditched the alarm clock - but unlucky enough to find out that it takes me around 9-10 hours of sleep to wake up naturally. Unfort…
What time do you go to sleep? Also any hints of sleep apnoe?
It seems like the author tested rote activities that were well within their comfort zone; I'd be curious to see how well they'd perform when trying to learn something new or work at something that they hadn't practiced before.
I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule a…
The problem I see with this kind of studies is that they don't measure long-term effects, and oh boy - do they exist. Its the topic I can be used as a bad example. When I was around 16, I found that my ideal sleep schedule was doing 20h awake and 6h sleeping. In those 20h, I'd spend around 13h in front of a monitor (monochrome, so less eye strain), and the rest doing the usual stuff (reading, eating, etc). I kept it for as long as I could (around 3 months), until it stared interfering with "life schedules" such as school. So instead of returning to the usual 8h sleep, I started sleeping when I could. It lasted a couple of years, until the brain couldn't take it anymore. After that, I spent the biggest part of 6 months sleeping (would be awake around 4-6h a day) and medicated (as far as I recall, no explicit sedatives). Fast forward a couple of years, and I'd do "marathons" like 20-40h awake, but then with 10-12h sleep time. Periodically, I'd need to sleep "a day" (usually around 14-16h) to feel recovered.
In the past 6 or so years, my sleep schedules have been pretty normal, but I sill need to sometimes sleep "a day" (at weekends), and its very difficult for me to sleep only 8h a night. When I'm on vacations, I usually sleep around 12h as often as I can.
Messing with sleep schedules (granted, in an extreme way) has had a profound negative impact in my life, and past 20 years, I still suffer consequences from my youth mistakes. The benefits I reaped from having "extra time" are dim compared to the long-term consequences not only on my health, but also on my personal life.
"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker summarizes quite a lot of research on sleep. It leaves little doubt - we currently know of no safe way to significantly cut down sleep. I haven't seen the research presented in that book being refuted.
I think this book is mostly bullshit - the same author that wrote the linked HN post dug into that book and there was a ton of manipulative data and just straight up false claims. [0] I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it. From a previous post: I got a strong motivated reasoning/bullshit vibe from Walker in this interview: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-war... Particularly this se…
I find this argument odd for a couple reasons.
First, if you "can't get back lost sleep", wouldn't that mean that you were tired forever? I'm definitely more tired after 24 hours awake than 18. But I can sleep and get back to normal.
Second, I once stayed up for almost 3 days straight. At the end of that, I slept for 24 hours straight. I woke up the next evening as if it were a normal morning, fully refreshed. (I went to bed about 5pm, and woke up about 5pm the next day.)
If I didn't "bank" my tiredness and pay it back with sleep, how is that even possible?