Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

> 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.

I disagree. I spent part of my high school in India and I have worked on Indian engineering entrance exams. They did involve extensive amount of working through problems. There was more memorizing rather than abstract problem solving. I am not convinced the amount of clear headed thinking that was needed to perform practice drills on problem sets is the same as I need when I need to design something new or write theoretical proofs.

Not that you can't go rage hard and convince yourself you can pull an all-nighter or whatever. I have only found that at the end of the day there are two results:

a) The stuff that you make is not up to spec.

b) You are tired the next day and your productivity is fucked.

I prefer the long race.

I have found to stay maximally productive and creative I have to switch it up.

If I just get in a routine it seems like things flag. The best thing for me is to laze off and sleep for 10 hours a day... casually poke around at some stuff for awhile. Then, have a burst of output and sleep 5 hours for a couple/few nights while spending the remainder in a flurry of concentrated activity. Then, back to a regular normal routine for a stretch. If I try any one of these for long it seems my productivity and interest flag though.

I don't know if it's just me or if we evolved to have periods of rest and stress.

The whole deficit thing is interesting. I've felt that I do that too, but I've also heard people say that sleep doesn't work that way. It definitely could just be that any time I'm sleeping more than 8 hours I'm just being lazy.

I think it would be more Edison would have you work to your output in the gym, and then move onto doing independent research on weightlifting during recovery times.

>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.

And did you cut this down to (even) 10 hours and observe real changes in productivity?

>Most of it psychological.

No. You get physical symptoms from sleep depredation. You can't think these problems away but you can convince yourself you aren't having them. Doesn't actually change your body's need for sleep.

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10...?

From the article:

Sleep Loss Impairs Judgment, Especially About Sleep

Lack of sleep can affect our interpretation of events. This hurts our ability to make sound judgments because we may not assess situations accurately and act on them wisely.

Sleep-deprived people seem to be especially prone to poor judgment when it comes to assessing what lack of sleep is doing to them. In our increasingly fast-paced world, functioning on less sleep has become a kind of badge of honor. But sleep specialists say if you think you’re doing fine on less sleep, you’re probably wrong. And if you work in a profession where it’s important to be able to judge your level of functioning, this can be a big problem.

“Studies show that over time, people who are getting six hours of sleep, instead of seven or eight, begin to feel that they’ve adapted to that sleep deprivation -- they’ve gotten used to it,” Gehrman says. “But if you look at how they actually do on tests of mental alertness and performance, they continue to go downhill. So there’s a point in sleep deprivation when we lose touch with how impaired we are.”

Sleep plays a critical role in thinking and learning. Lack of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. First, it impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn efficiently.

Second, during the night, various sleep cycles play a role in “consolidating” memories in the mind. If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t be able to remember what you learned and experienced during the day.

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

Doesn't mean it's healthy. Doesn't mean that you are performing at max capacity.