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The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

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Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#41
I wonder how much of the conventional wisdom on sleep is wrong. I know a lot of people (especially post military) who claim they have essentially trained themselves to live adequately on 5 hours or less a night. But most sleep studies seem focused on short-term changes or average populations.

Maybe I'm weird, but I hate sleep. If I had the option to function off of 3-less hours a day, that would be like getting back 45 days worth of my time every year.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#42
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be a function of their jobs, which weren't specified in the abstract. While insufficient sleep might cause physical discomfort and contribute to long-term health problems, if their job weren't highly physically or mentally demanding, I suspect that most people could get through the day with negligible detriment to their short-term economic output after having a cup of coffee.

The average teacher’s job is reasonably mentally demanding but despite waking and starting work at unnaturally early hours (in the US and China) people do acceptably with coffee. The students do worse because the schedule is even more divergent from their natural sleep schedule and they’re less likely to have coffee or other stimulants.

What time do they start work in the US?

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief. It almost makes me question what information is missing from the abstract since I don't know how one can consistently run on fumes without it affecting cognition, productivity or decision making.

Throwaway as I don't want to admit that I feel permanently cognitively impaired. Anecdotal, but I spent years not sleeping through university and sleeping in airports or on the train. Studied engineering and did a lot of hackathons and events and stuff. I figured out then that I didn't need full cognition or excellent decision making. I needed more hours cranking out work. I spent years sleeping just a few hours and…

From my own experience: go get therapy, meditation classes and Ritalin! It wasn’t until I turned 26 and got access to all three that I could finally _learn_ what concentration really was. I went through Highschool without having to study a single day, getting very good grades nevertheless - while being on very little sleep with a total lack of a regular rhythm. College didn’t go so well, but other interests and pursuits were fulfilling. Meanwhile, the rise of social media trained my attention span to be shorter and shorter and shorter - until I had finally realized I couldn’t reed a single page of a book without drifting away. The above mentioned three-part intervention worked because A) in therapy, I could get i) help how to navigate the day-to-day problems and ii) help understanding why and how I got to that point, e.g. learned behavior, but also genetic predisposition, B) thanks to the medication, I could experience a state of high focus I hadn’t had in years - maybe ever - and enjoy a kind of focused flow, where I was completely in charge of what I do (compared to a state of flow where you just follow external and internal impulses ) and C), meditation (especially in the time I took ritalin) helped me learn how to focus on something, let go of that focus, and re-focus again (I used headspace for that).

I cannot tell you if a change in my sleeping habits was the result of all that, if it has been a coincidence or if it preceded any improvements - but it certainly didn’t hurt the process.

Today, I don’t need therapy or medication anymore, can focus good enough on my work and in the stories my significant other tells me. I don’t get nervous anymore anytime I have to wait in a line, I do fewer mistakes, I can read a book and feel less bored, more happy. It’s something I had to learn, but I needed some help with that. It’s worth a try!

Today, I also realize a significant decrease in performance and happiness if I get a single night of bad sleep. Before I knew how my days could really feel, I didn’t care about that - but I’m sure I had been impacted badly, nevertheless.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average teacher’s job is reasonably mentally demanding but despite waking and starting work at unnaturally early hours (in the US and China) people do acceptably with coffee. The students do worse because the schedule is even more divergent from their natural sleep schedule and they’re less likely to have coffee or other stimulants.

What time do they start work in the US?

My daughter's school starts at 7am, so she has to be up by 5:45am. It's stupid.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that a study 'Economic Benefits of Meth use on the Urban Poor' would be looked upon so well by the Ethics Board.

Many countries in the WW2 era sold amphetamine based drugs as antidepressants, for "creating the right attitude", making your wife focus on housework, etc. (and other rather disturbing things). Essentially, drugging workers doing low-skill tasks to make them more cooperative or productive or something. I wonder how much research was done at the time and has been done in retrospect.

Sounds a lot like Brave New World

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What time do they start work in the US?

My daughter's school starts at 7am, so she has to be up by 5:45am. It's stupid.

That is really crazy early! Where is this?

My high school started at 08:10 (I think) and elementary school at 08:15 and those were the earliest starters in the neighbourhood. University luckily started around 9.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#47
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sentence before that is: "Contrary to expert predictions and a large body of sleep research". Was this study better science that disproved the existing body? Or poorer science? Or is there something problematic about sleep in Chennai? Or special about the people in Chennai? The full paper states: > An enormous body of research, mostly conducted in sleep labs in rich countries, documents severe negative impacts of…

It could also be a function of their jobs, which weren't specified in the abstract. While insufficient sleep might cause physical discomfort and contribute to long-term health problems, if their job weren't highly physically or mentally demanding, I suspect that most people could get through the day with negligible detriment to their short-term economic output after having a cup of coffee.

Poor people aren't doing brain work but instead do manual labor etc. It definitely should be a core part of any study to highlight this.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief. It almost makes me question what information is missing from the abstract since I don't know how one can consistently run on fumes without it affecting cognition, productivity or decision making.

Throwaway as I don't want to admit that I feel permanently cognitively impaired. Anecdotal, but I spent years not sleeping through university and sleeping in airports or on the train. Studied engineering and did a lot of hackathons and events and stuff. I figured out then that I didn't need full cognition or excellent decision making. I needed more hours cranking out work. I spent years sleeping just a few hours and…

Since I had a child, I started questioning whether cognitive decay in aging people was really caused by aging or a change in sleep patterns. Now my kid makes his nights mostly without problems, but the ~2 years of insufficient sleep feels like it had a toll.

Re: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor

#50
post #3

Those in the study were low-income adults in Chennai, India who sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. The key takeaway was: > increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply. I find the result surprising. When I get under 6 hours I see a clear drop off in performance.

What does spending 8 hours in bed but only sleeping for 5.5 hours mean specifically, and how is this measured? What is the expected amount of sleep for a healthy person that spends 8 hours in bed?

For a healthy person in a good bed without interruptions, 8 hours. But if you have trouble falling back to sleep after being woken up, you can lose a fair amount in a noisy environment. If your bed is bad, you may wake up or not fall into a deep sleep. And there are medical conditions that can make you be unconscious but not actually sleeping. Plus, high stress levels interferes with sleep.
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