Ask HN: How many hours of sleep are you getting?

About 5-6 between baby and work. Feel okay but not amazing. I envy the people who can do 4 hours consistently and function.

I often end up almost entirely stopping coffee as soon as a term ends. Last time I did, I also forced myself to go to bed earlier and do some work at home before leaving for work. It worked for quite a while but as the term progressed and work from both job and university piled up, I started to not have time to follow this strict schedule and to drink more and more coffee. It's very difficult when your schedule is tight, but I believe it's better to stick to way nevertheless. Tomorrow, I'm starting this schedule again. Keep going on yours!

Average probably 5-6 hours, on balance.

I admit I'm a bit amazed to see the number of folks who report sleeping 10 or more hours a night; I've been assuming normal sleeping habits were around 8 hours a night.

Personally, I do best on 8 a night (i.e., waking without an alarm), but I sacrifice quite a bit of sleep trying to work more or less full time but also be a more or less full-time parent to a 4-year-old and a 7-month-old.

The trickiest part is finding long unbroken stretches of time to concentrate on harder problems; I can manage emails while distracted, or in short bursts, and simpler coding tasks, but solving trickier problems usually happens in the middle of the night.

I tend to alternate sleeping 2-3 hours one night (e.g., 6-8am), then 7-8 the next. I feel mostly normal even on the days when I'm running a more serious deficit and don't generally feel sleepy during the day, though I can tell when the side-effects (reduced patience, mental errors, etc.) are creeping up more, and I'll try to spend a few nights in a row sleeping more.

I don't generally drink anything caffeinated, particularly when I'm running on little sleep, or if I'm planning on staying up to work -- it seems to affect me much more when I'm seriously sleep-deprived, giving me an unpleasant jittery feeling; the worst part is that I can't sleep when I want to, but my concentration is ruined, so there's no longer any point to staying awake.

Step 1: no longer have some at home - that's passive, just don't buy it no more. Finish what you have

Step 2: refuse to use it outside your home. That's more active, and may require a commitment. You can start by allowing yourself to drink one every other day, to mitigate withdrawal symptoms.

Decaf etc - I can't say how useful it is, I wanted to cut coffee and not replace an habit by another one. No more coke or redbull either, since the problem here is caffeine: the active ingredient in coffee is also present in coke and redbull and the likes (pepsi, monster, ...)

Google plus support group : https://plus.google.com/communities/113447576520287991560

So far, I have been very dysfunctional during the first 2 days, and at my 4th day I feel normal. I was expecting to feel bad for up to 9 days.

It has had an interesting effect: it seems like I need less sleep, something I noticed when I tried to reduce the dosage these last weeks (not quitting altogether), and completely counterintuitive!

It may be just a normal variation due to a very small sample size. I would be curious to see how much sleep I will need in a year from now. Of course, your results may vary.

6-7 hours, 9-10 on weekends.