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Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

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Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#21

Post by elorant »

monochr wrote: post #14
dasil003 wrote: post #11

One thing that having a kid taught me is that sleep deprivation really hurts my productivity as a programmer. It may be that some people can sleep 5 hours and function just fine, I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. But when it comes to work ridiculous hours I've yet to see someone regularly claiming 100 hours work weeks outperform me over any length of time. If I can get in the zone and ach…

>I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I have seen too many of those people either burn up or not actually be able to keep up with me when crunch time comes and a two day caffeine and less legal binge is the only way to do what you know needs to get done…

I can work 10 hours a day and be quite productive. I don’t do it on a regular basis but when things get tough I can keep a schedule like that for weeks. Difference is though that I work from home. So I don’t spend time on various trivialities and I split my 10-hour work in two parts with a nice two hour nap in between. Also I’m an early riser. Starting my day at 5:30, by midday I've accumulated 6 hours of very productive work. I won't argue that working long hours is the smartest thing anyone can do but it's nice to know an effective way to do it if the need arises.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#22

Post by kamaal »

monochr wrote: post #14
dasil003 wrote: post #11

One thing that having a kid taught me is that sleep deprivation really hurts my productivity as a programmer. It may be that some people can sleep 5 hours and function just fine, I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. But when it comes to work ridiculous hours I've yet to see someone regularly claiming 100 hours work weeks outperform me over any length of time. If I can get in the zone and ach…

>I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I have seen too many of those people either burn up or not actually be able to keep up with me when crunch time comes and a two day caffeine and less legal binge is the only way to do what you know needs to get done…

>>I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit.

I don't completely agree with that. People who achieve amazing things working even 16 hours a day are pretty common. I have done that many times in the past. When I did my engineering here in India. Preparing for public exams, and entrance exams- I have regularly worked on subjects like Math and Physics almost 15-17 hours a day. Most of friends who cracked the exams did the same. It happens all the time.

When I worked at the call center, I would show up at work at 1 AM in the night, get back to home by 11 AM, sleep till 4-5 PM in the afternoon and then work towards learning programming till 12 in the night again. I would do this thing every day, for months. Most Indian IT giants who get outsourced projects routinely over work their employees, I worked for one in the early part of my career.

But again its also about practice, and how much you can take. Most of it psychological. You can never do anything, you have convinced yourself that you can't do.

You will be surprised how long you can go sleepless, when that is the only option you have.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#23

Post by zhte415 »

monochr wrote: post #14
dasil003 wrote: post #11

One thing that having a kid taught me is that sleep deprivation really hurts my productivity as a programmer. It may be that some people can sleep 5 hours and function just fine, I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. But when it comes to work ridiculous hours I've yet to see someone regularly claiming 100 hours work weeks outperform me over any length of time. If I can get in the zone and ach…

>I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I have seen too many of those people either burn up or not actually be able to keep up with me when crunch time comes and a two day caffeine and less legal binge is the only way to do what you know needs to get done…

> I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit.

It depends on the type of work, work environment, and people one's working with.

One environment I've worked in had almost nothing but 'performance budget' and 'risk budget' defined. It was fascinating for myself, a 20-something at the time, to sit in a quite comfortable office for 12 hour stretches just looking at numbers and figuring out interesting things to do. Invigorating, in fact, with almost no pressure, just fun.

In another I ended up in quite a large organisation as regional 'service delivery head' which basically meant fielding several hundred emails per day across quite a broad timezone. Despite a an array of systems hacked together across several decades, and perhaps that was the fun, the team and I were pretty productive, however defined, and cut operating expenses by a considerable margin. Less blue-sky, more operations focused, but fun long hours nonetheless.

Having a child was quite a learning experience: we're all learning, all of the time, and we're also doing stuff, all of the time. I now work for myself, and view time on HN, or watching recordings of STTNG, or walking in a local park, or going to local university art displays, very legitimately as productive time, as I'm exposed to others' views, findings, methods, and inspirations of people that create something great.

I've never filled in a timesheet.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#24

Post by zokier »

I have relatively poor attention span, and have trouble maintaining good sleep patterns. What I've found is that there is a sort of "Ballmer Peak" ( http://xkcd.com/323/ ) when I'm slightly under-slept where I can focus far better than when I'm fully rested. Of course it is a narrow zone and not really sustainable.

I wonder if that is the general experience in our attention deficient generation, and if that might be a contributing factor in people preferring to cut their sleep.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#25

Post by danielbarla »

kamaal wrote: post #22
monochr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep. I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I have seen too many of those people either burn up or not actually be able to keep up with me when crunch time comes and a two day caffeine and less legal binge is the only way to do what you know needs to get done…

>>I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I don't completely agree with that. People who achieve amazing things working even 16 hours a day are pretty common. I have done that many times in the past. When I did my engineering here in India. Preparing for public exams, and entrance exams- I have regularly worked on sub…

In my own experience, in the "short term" it really comes down to motivation / inspiration. If you are sufficiently motivated, overworking yourself seems to be far less painful, and productivity doesn't really seem to be impacted. I've certainly pulled all-nighters before with code going into production pretty successfully.

I specifically put short term in quotes because I'm not sure how I would define it. It probably depends on a lot of factors, but I wouldn't stretch it past several weeks. Way past that, motivation also seems to be highly impacted, and you become the kind of tired, error prone zombie who stretches out their 8 hours of work over 16.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#26

Post by ironash »

Over the years I've found that I definitely need 8 hours sleep but didn't often get it. I would normally manage about 6-7 hours and would soon build up a deficit. This had a definite impact on my well being and performance at work. Recently I've started using a timer instead of an alarm clock to ensure that I always get eight hours. If I go to bed later I get up later. On the rare occasions that I go to bed substantially later (e.g. attending a concert) and so can't allow eight hours, I still cope well because I'm already well rested. Ditto for when my young son wakes in the night - previously this would have killed me.

I know this isn't viable for everyone but my employer allows flexible working hours.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#27

Post by kamaal »

danielbarla wrote: post #25
kamaal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I don't completely agree with that. People who achieve amazing things working even 16 hours a day are pretty common. I have done that many times in the past. When I did my engineering here in India. Preparing for public exams, and entrance exams- I have regularly worked on sub…

In my own experience, in the "short term" it really comes down to motivation / inspiration. If you are sufficiently motivated, overworking yourself seems to be far less painful, and productivity doesn't really seem to be impacted. I've certainly pulled all-nighters before with code going into production pretty successfully. I specifically put short term in quotes because I'm not sure how I would define it. It probabl…

I agree.

Actually its about knowing when to sleep than sleeping less always, more like when to accelerate and when to brake. I guess that's what Edison did too.

Many times over a period what you really need is long stretches of un interrupted time to get something big done. You will have to take a break after that. Come back with a fresh purpose, an new challenge and start again.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#29

Post by mercer »

5partan wrote: post #13

Four billion years of evolution? Professor Russell Foster from Oxford University has no clue, evoluton learned us to sleep polyphasic, like babies, where you need far less sleep than the 8 recommended hours. I'm sure even Thomas Edison took regular naps.

On the one hand, I think you're probably right. I've had good experiences with implementing unorthodox sleeping habits.

On the other hand, I think we as a species have proven ourselves to be remarkably good at adapting ourselves to different circumstances, and 8 hours also seems to be a working approach, as well as one siesta during the day.

The biggest problems I faced with polyphasic sleep was that 1) the world assumes 8 hours nightly, so it was hard to maintain after being a student, even as a freelancer, and 2) it required more conscious effort than 'normal' sleep to maintain, partly because of 1. It often resulted in me getting too little sleep in the end, because life would throw a wrench in the schedule...

Still, it's utterly fascinating. In case you haven't read them yet, the blog posts by Steve Pavlina on his experiences implementing polyphasic sleep are quite fascinating (much as I'm pretty sure I don't like the guy, to put it mildly).

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#30

Post by secfirstmd »

I once worked with a guy who only ever slept about 4 hours a night for years. He would then run a full marathon into work every morning. I can tell you right now, his body was there but his ability to do anything other than make small tactical decisions was destroyed. Having a strategic meeting about the direction of the company was pointless, as you could nearly see has brain unable to compute and think at that level. The end of the story was that he died on Mount Everest and the company has basically collapsed because of his poor management and some other financial irregularities.
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