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Poll: How late do you stay up?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#41

Post by bobdobbs »

auston wrote: post #12
smakz wrote: post #6

I'm a 10PM sleeper - the morning is a really under-appreciated hacking time. I've found, generally, that 12AM and later hacking sessions both aren't sustainable and aren't as productive as they seem at first glance. Plus, I'm usually so excited in the morning to get working that I have no trouble getting up (around 5am - 7 hours sleep) to start hacking. Personally, when I was doing the 4AM hacking sessions, I was wor…

I too am a 10PM bed timer, only recently though, it forces me to use the time before bed more productively. Before I would waste time browsing news.yc, digg, watching videos and reading blogs/news. Now I try to catch up on blogs whenever I have the chance and place more attention of developing stuff.

Just out of interest; how old were you when you switched to 10PM ?

Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#43

Post by dmfdmf »

benjamincanfly wrote: post #11

I consider myself to have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome ), though whether it should qualify as a "syndrome" is debatable. I don't need more sleep than the average person, I just need it later in the 24-hour cycle. I wouldn't be surprised if many/most hackers are the same way.

I read an article that blue light can cause delayed sleep. Apparently, it interferes with the evening release of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep. The article speculated that the common perception that hackers are night-owls could be caused by staring at a monitor with blue backgrounds, etc. I don't know if its true.

Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#45

Post by auston »

bobdobbs wrote: post #41
auston wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am a 10PM bed timer, only recently though, it forces me to use the time before bed more productively. Before I would waste time browsing news.yc, digg, watching videos and reading blogs/news. Now I try to catch up on blogs whenever I have the chance and place more attention of developing stuff.

Just out of interest; how old were you when you switched to 10PM ?

I am 21 now. I switched a little over 2 weeks ago.

Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#46

Post by kajecounterhack »

It is the case for me, but only because I have so much during the day, as a high school student and an athlete. Otherwise I wouldn't push my body like this because its not good for anyone to stay up like that. I just can't keep myself away from making cool things though ;)

Guess that stereotype fits me at anyrate

Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#48

Post by ashleyw »

mark-t wrote: post #14

My sleep schedule drifts forward gradually. Right now, I go to bed around 6pm and wake up around 2am. Tomorrow, it'll probably be an hour later. A couple weeks from now, I'll be going to bed at 6am. I do find that I'm much more productive when I'm awake during the night. It's probably because there aren't any interruptions and I couldn't run an errand if I wanted to.

I really thought I was the only one. Seriously.

I call it my "sleep clock", one day I'm awake from 10am->11pm, and a week later I'm awake 10pm->11am.

Not good though when you have things planned, you have to make sure your in the right timezone when you need to be.

Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?

#49

Post by froo »

antiismist wrote: post #40
a-priori wrote: post #38

I'm actually in the process of reducing the amount of sleep I get. For most my life, I've lived by an 8-9 hours/night schedule. This summer, however, I took a behavioural neuroscience course and one of the things I've learnt is that most people can reduce their sleep down to 4.5-5.5 hours with only minor side effects. After starting this experiment about 2 weeks ago, I'm down to 6.5 hours now with no side effects. So…

Can you share a link or describe this a bit?

I think what he is describing is talking about quality of sleep rather than quantity.

I'm no expert, so I'm really just regurgitating something I read awhile ago, so please bare in mind that it is probably not 100% correct, but the seed of the idea is there. I'm more or less going to describe what I've done based off what I've read.

The body only needs a couple of hours of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep to feel fully refreshed, anything over that and you're essentially wasting time.

I'm surviving pretty well on about 4-5 hours a night, it really depends but I find that if you exercise first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up, you do not miss that sleep.

I've actually purchased a recumbent exercise bike so that I can read blogs and forums in the morning while I exercise - this helps me compress my time so that I can get more done during the day.

The most important thing I've found is to ensure you have a consistent pattern for sleeping, otherwise my body will invariably want more sleep as it tries to get back into some sort of pattern.

To aid this, I've had my doctor prescribe me 10mg Temazepam which I think is a fantastic drug. I'm not on a high enough dosage to get hooked, but if need too, I take 1 tablet and it knocks me out fairly easily and unlike other drugs it is not one of those ones that will keep you asleep.

Hope this helps in some way.

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