I cycle my timezone. It takes a few weeks for each cycle.
Poll: How late do you stay up?
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#52My most productive time is when the rest of the world is asleep.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#53When I'm on-site consulting I'm a 8PM sleeper. I've found that early to work gives me good productive time to "boot up" and be as perky as possible for the clients. I'm usually up by 4 and on-site by 6ish. If working on a startup, I code for an hour or so in the morning and 3-4 in the evenings (after working 10-11 hours)
When I'm off-contract and working solely on my start-up? Then it's a lot tougher. I've found even as an old fart that I easily push myself into the wee hours of the morning. In fact, I find I'm more productive if I structure my coding -- actually making myself NOT code while I do other things like hit the gym or sleep. But it's a tough haul to do so.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#54Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#55Usually until 4 am, but once i stayed until 6 am, went jogging and went to sleep in 8 am, woke up at 8 pm and 2 weeks i've been fixing my sleep schedule because of that.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm no expert on this either; I just studied this section of the book pretty thoroughly :)
What you say is correct, but about SWS ("Slow Wave Sleep", or stages 3 and 4 -- stage 1 being when REM occurs). These are the main recouperative stages.
Eliminating REM sleep (e.g. by waking someone up at the start of a REM cycle then letting them go back to sleep when the cycle would have ended) has little or no effect on alertness the next day, but doing the same for SWS cycles results in symptoms of sleep deprivation.
It has been hypothesized that REM sleep plays a role in strengthening memories, but evidence for this is spotty.
Regardless of how many hours you're asleep, reducing the amount of time spent asleep reduces the amount of REM sleep, but not NREM sleep, making you a "more efficient" sleeper.
The main evidence for long-term sleep reducton comes from studies by Friedman et al. (1977) and Mullaney et al. (1977). In these studies, which covered eight subjects over a period of several months, two reduced their sleep down to 5.5 hours, four down to 5 hours and the remaining two down to 4.5 hours. Below about 6 hours, the subjects reported daytime sleepiness, which increased as sleep was futher reduced. A follow-up study a year later showed that the subjects were sleeping 7-18 hours less per week. With only eight subjects, I'm a bit concerned about the generalizability of this study, but I think it's good enough for my purposes.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#5723h30min
I will mark 00h since it is closer.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#58Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened to your social life?
Social life starts way before 10PM. Not everything social is a late-night party.
You miss out on parties, but that's not all. Because sleeping just after dinner is unhealthy (it becomes the equivalent of the late night snack) you also have to move dinner forward to something like 5pm or 6pm. Result - you won't be able to eat with friends anymore.
When you go to bed at 10pm you don't just trade a few night hours for morning hours, your entire schedule has to shift. Don't think that's worth it.
Re: Poll: How late do you stay up?
#60I 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.
Emissive light sources in general interfere with melatonin. I have a severe melatonin deficiency and I find that avoiding TV, monitors, and bright lightbulbs for an hour before bed helps tremendously in my ability to sleep, in conjunction with a synthesized melatonin medication (Rozerem). Books (and I imagine eBooks with eInk) are fine, but the laptop is not.
DSPS makes maintaining a normal 24-hour schedule painful. (Imagine having to get up one hour earlier every day! That's how a 24-hour schedule feels to me.) I have it and it takes a lot of self-discipline to hold down the 9-to-5 schedule. But it is possible with the right techniques. More info on my experiences at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=205179 .