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How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

nytimes.com

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Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#51

Post by radu_floricica »

pstack wrote: post #22

I'd settle for even being able to sleep at regular intervals. I have a habit of staying up until I'm tired and waking up when I can't sleep anymore. As a result, I may stay up all day for several days and then stay up all night for several days. Or for several days, I may sleep twice during 24hrs, in completely random periods. I just don't do well with the concept of "well, it's 10pm, so that means it's time to get i…

Long live melatonin. Gave me a lot more control over my sleep schedule. Plus, the "positive side effects" section on the wikipedia entry is several pages long...

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#52

Post by chadp »

udoprog wrote: post #29

Loved this article. I would love to see a simliar test around polyphasic sleep ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep ). I've actually tried the Uberman sleep schedule for three weeks. This is where you sleep 20 minutes for each 4 hours, totalling in a whopping 2 hours sleep each day. The time gain was insane, and the transition period aswell (between day 3-5 I actually hallucinated due to sleep deprevation)…

I thought the article was useless. The only thing that would have been interesting is how (or if) polyphasic naps can replace hours of one's core sleep.

Uberman is too extreme to keep up, no one has done it for long periods yet. The Everyman with a core sleep of 3-4.5 hrs a day with 2-3 15 minute naps is much more interesting.

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#53

Post by wizard_2 »

guygurari wrote: post #50
BlazingFrog wrote: post #47

I envy all of you people who "choose" how many hours of sleep they will have (or not have). After you have kids, especially if their sleep pattern is very inconsistent for no apparent reason, you just take whatever you can get. Unfortunately, you may not be ready to sleep at 10pm that night that your child will decide to wake up at 1am ready to go about her day... Don't pay attention to me. Just another rant from a s…

We had a lot of sleep-related problems with our kid. We recently sought professional help and started a program that gives children good sleep habits. We are three weeks in, and the results so far are nothing short of amazing. To put it simply, the kid is sleeping much better, and we got our lives back. One thing we learned the hard way is that following a method from a book is not enough -- you need a professional t…

Can you explain in a bit more depth?

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#55

Post by rednum »

udoprog wrote: post #29

Loved this article. I would love to see a simliar test around polyphasic sleep ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep ). I've actually tried the Uberman sleep schedule for three weeks. This is where you sleep 20 minutes for each 4 hours, totalling in a whopping 2 hours sleep each day. The time gain was insane, and the transition period aswell (between day 3-5 I actually hallucinated due to sleep deprevation)…

Isn't polyphasic considered a hoax? Piotr Wozniak, though his site looks rather shitty, seems to know what he is talking about: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm Specifically this paragraph sums the thing up:

  I received some 500 pieces of mail and got in personal
  touch with many polyphasic adepts. Of those attempts that
  I was given a chance to monitor, all were unsuccessful.   
  Some of the critics of the original article claimed that 
  they do sleep polyphasically, but I received no data that 
  could serve as the basis for verification.
Also I recall reading quite many stories about people who tried polyphasic and they are similar to yours - ie. after 2-3 weeks they stop for some random reason - which really sounds to me like "I can't make it, but I won't admit even to myself so I say I stopped for reason X". Also some actually stop earlier and admit they were constantly deprivated.

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#56

Post by patrickk »

How little sleep one can survive on is something I would like to not to explore. I've struggled with insomnia for over a decade now, and if you are fortunate to consistently get a solid nights sleep and wake up refreshed, then you should appreciate the energy you have.

I would much rather sleep well, have less hours in the day to work with and operate at 80-100% mental capacity rather than get less sleep, drink gallons of coffee or other stimulants and struggle with being able to think clearly.

Ironically enough, it's exam season now and I may have found a solution - forcing myself to go to bed at midnight, and up at 8-9am (no matter how bad I feel) and taking one caffeine tablet in the morning and one at at lunch, I now have something like regular alertness for the first time consistently in years. It's only a few days into this phase however so who knows how it will pan out. Many a false dawn (pun intended) was had before with solving insomnia!

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#57

Post by kaiwetzel »

bcl wrote: post #30
ajkessler wrote: post #6

I don't buy the seemingly arbitrary distinction that 8 hours is a good night's sleep. I know people who require 9+ hours per night (ie they appear sleep deprived if they get less than 9 for a few consecutive nights). I know one person who requires about 4 per night (not a forced four where you end up looking 10 years older than you really are after a few years). I do like the idea of testing where your sweet spot is,…

Read the article more closely. Most need 8. There are some who need less, some who need more. The graph might even look like a bell curve ;)

I was a little disappointed by the article in this regard. While it's mentioned that "There is a small portion of the population — he estimates it at around 5 percent or even less — who, for what researchers think may be genetic reasons, can maintain their performance with five or fewer hours of sleep. (There is also a small percentage who require 9 or 10 hours.)" it would be very interesting to know if there is a larger than 5% group that does just fine with 6 or 7 hours of sleep.

Assuming your assumption about the distribution of "needing x hours of sleep to do well" is correct and if we assume that 5% need only 5 hours or less and the mean is at 8 hours (the article is even unclear about what those 8 hours represent so it's a wild guess at best), how large is the percentage of people needing 7.5 hours or less? (Roughly 40% if it's a normal distribution). So what the article says about "most of us" is technically correct the interesting answers for the many of us that presumably need between 5 and 8 hours of sleep is left out.

Does it make a difference in what sleep phase people are woken up (after the n hours of sleep their group gets)? I wish more money would be available for this area of research so longer and more detailed studies could be done. And better handouts for journalists.

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#58

Post by edoloughlin »

wizard_2 wrote: post #53
guygurari wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a lot of sleep-related problems with our kid. We recently sought professional help and started a program that gives children good sleep habits. We are three weeks in, and the results so far are nothing short of amazing. To put it simply, the kid is sleeping much better, and we got our lives back. One thing we learned the hard way is that following a method from a book is not enough -- you need a professional t…

Can you explain in a bit more depth?

"you need a professional to guide you through this" - I think that's probably enough depth?

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#59

Post by FrojoS »

sliverstorm wrote: post #36
ianl wrote: post #26

During my first year of university while I was running a start up our of dorm room (modest success) and doing a full course load I was running on four hours of sleep a night and an hour afternoon's nap just before supper. That experience taught me something very important, sleep is crucial. When you are tired you get tunnel vision and all you want to do is complete your task. The long term effects of this on your sta…

The worst part is you only want to complete the task, so that you can sleep.

No, the worst part is, that you wake up and find you only produced crap.

Re: How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

#60

Post by dkersten »

rednum wrote: post #55
udoprog wrote: post #29

Loved this article. I would love to see a simliar test around polyphasic sleep ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep ). I've actually tried the Uberman sleep schedule for three weeks. This is where you sleep 20 minutes for each 4 hours, totalling in a whopping 2 hours sleep each day. The time gain was insane, and the transition period aswell (between day 3-5 I actually hallucinated due to sleep deprevation)…

Isn't polyphasic considered a hoax? Piotr Wozniak, though his site looks rather shitty, seems to know what he is talking about: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm Specifically this paragraph sums the thing up: I received some 500 pieces of mail and got in personal touch with many polyphasic adepts. Of those attempts that I was given a chance to monitor, all were unsuccessful. Some of the critics of…

That doesn't really make it a hoax though: yes, everybody gave up after a while, but like OP, it may well just be social pressure. All polyphasic sleep accounts I read ended up with something along the lines of "its too hard to fit social events around such a strict schedule". If you're awake during the night when nobody else is and you have to nap when everybody else is awake, and you CANNOT miss a nap, then of course people are eventually going to cave in and go back to a more normal schedule so that they mesh with their friends schedules better.

I think to make the ubermann cycle work, you need 1) to have a job that allows such a schedule 2) not have kids 3) have a bunch of your friends do it too so that your schedule isn't too different from the people you interact with the most.

IMHO, its unlikely that people will will meet all three of those points though. The "solution" would perhaps be a less severe and strict schedule. For example, I tried a 28-hour day schedule (the one from xkcd.. am I crazy trying a sleep cycle I saw in a comic?) and it worked really well: stay up 20 hours then sleep for 8, repeat. Monday to thursday fit around my uni schedule (at the time) perfectly, Friday (which I had off) through Sunday I was basically awake at night and asleep during the day. I ended up with 6 28 hour days. Worked really well! ...until the day I had an appointment in the middle of my "I'm supposed to be asleep" time on a Friday, got knocked off course and didn't bother going back to it.

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