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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

#41

Post by normloman »

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.

The idea that you can be healthy, productive and sleep less practicing polyphasic sleep is controversial and deserves empirical study.

I just sleep whenever I feel tired, wake whenever I wake up. Big surprise: I naturally sleep for around 8 hours a day.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#43

Post by enoch_r »

monochr wrote: post #19
watwut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that people who spend 10+ hour day in work tend to spend a lot of time socializing, on facebook or otherwise wasting. The problem often is that their needs to socialize and relax are not lower. Without realizing it, they started to use time spend in work to fulfill those needs. It slows down everybody, but looks good to management.

Which is my observation too. For the sake of Yahoo I hope Marissa Mayer is just a liar because they might be still getting their moneys worth, even if she personally needs to feel like a hero by making claims about self sacrifice etc. If she does what she says she does in terms of sleep, e.g. 130 hour weeks, then they are paying someone millions of dollars to make decisions in a state so impaired[1] that they would b…

Everyone is not the same. I am definitely in the 8-hours-a-night camp, but a small percentage of the population seems to have a genetic variation that allows them to sleep much less.[1]

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870371250...

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#44

Post by Htsthbjig »

Measure yourself.

If you believe you can work equally good with sleep deprivation you should test it.

Start measuring how productive you are hour after hour, WRITING down(very important) not only how much you do but also your energy level. Do this for 40 days.

Now, for 40 days do the same but sleeping what you need, no timer clock.

Compare the results.

When I did it for a completely unrelated reason, the results were so shocking to me. I actually believed that sacrifice meant better results. It does not have to.

Probably you don't need to sleep much if your job does not require much from you, just meeting people, staying there and so on.

I do triple or quadruple my productivity. I do program machines, and those things make work for me, but what they do has to be perfect.

Remember Chernobyl or the Air France disasters. The mostly trained and smart persons become stupid after sleep deprivation.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#45

Post by monochr »

enoch_r wrote: post #43
monochr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is my observation too. For the sake of Yahoo I hope Marissa Mayer is just a liar because they might be still getting their moneys worth, even if she personally needs to feel like a hero by making claims about self sacrifice etc. If she does what she says she does in terms of sleep, e.g. 130 hour weeks, then they are paying someone millions of dollars to make decisions in a state so impaired[1] that they would b…

Everyone is not the same. I am definitely in the 8-hours-a-night camp, but a small percentage of the population seems to have a genetic variation that allows them to sleep much less.[1] [1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870371250...

I'm sorry but I just don't buy this.

I'm Eastern European and when I was growing up I still had the cult of personality around Stalin in living memory. The sorts of claims they make about "short sleepers" there are exactly the kinds of claims that were made about Stalin and other high ranking Communists. This was the reason why they deserved to rule, just as these supposed short sleepers are the digital hyper capitalists who deserve to rule the world:

" Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism (they're thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually raises the risk of obesity). [...] "They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again," [...]"Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," says Dr. Jones. "There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don't understand." "

Yet three years later there aren't any clinical studies that have followed these supermen for any prolonged period to see how they actually act in day to day life, just more self reports.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#46

Post by laxatives »

secfirstmd wrote: post #30

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 leve…

Wow, he sounds like an extremely interesting person. Is there any written documentation on him? Maybe a blog or an article or something?

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#47

Post by discreteevent »

aestra wrote: post #39
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…

>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 h…

Well said. I personally know someone who just recently qualified with a first in medicine. She claims that she achieved this by getting a good nights sleep every night (i.e. 9 hours). She claims that this is what enabled her to qualify to do medicine also. All her classmates in college did exactly what kamaal describes (I have done it myself). They worked all the hours they could get because they were so afraid they wouldn't make it. And they passed their exams. But they didn't get a first. She said she spoke to a few of them a few times saying how ineffective this was, that medicine is hard and to build up a mental map and solid understanding you need sleep. As a well slept person she could see how ineffective they were. But it takes discipline and confidence (and maybe a bit of devil may care) not to panic and most people don't seem to be able to do this in the face of what they think are very tough odds.

My own observation on programming (significantly less taxing than studying medicine - no matter how you slice it) is that you can do a few late nights but after that it becomes drastically ineffective and the people involved get more and more dunning kruger about it. In the end the whole "push" consists of almost entirely ego and bullshit and the code is appalling.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#48

Post by dreamfactory2 »

ebiester wrote: post #36
watwut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that people who spend 10+ hour day in work tend to spend a lot of time socializing, on facebook or otherwise wasting. The problem often is that their needs to socialize and relax are not lower. Without realizing it, they started to use time spend in work to fulfill those needs. It slows down everybody, but looks good to management.

Or, they have a lot of meetings and only work for 2-3 hours.

Meetings are work and are even sometimes productive, no different to banging out code

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#49

Post by dreamfactory2 »

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…

> Most Indian IT giants who get outsourced projects routinely over work their employees

I've had to oversee a number of those for very large orgs and can vouch that the quality was consistently beyond terrible and caused no end of problems. Most of the work done that way was eventually thrown away.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#50

Post by lkrubner »

I worked in small startups for many years, and then later I worked in big companies for a few years. From my own experience, I would say sleep deprivation has no point in a big company. It only makes sense in a small startup when you are trying to hit some very specific and life-altering deadline, such as a meeting with a potential investor, whose money might determine the fate of the company.

I recall a long stretch from 2003 to 2006 (myself and my friends were doing our own startup) where we were often working crazy hours to meet deadlines. I recall at one point a guy was going to come in and possibly invest half a million dollars -- that would have changed everything for us. I recall I worked for 20 hours, then I slept for 2 hours, and then I worked for another 20 hours, just so we could have a bug-free demo when the guy showed up. I recall another time when we had to meet with a potential investor at 12 PM on Thursday, and I started work at 11 AM on Wednesday, and I kept working, and I kept finding bugs, and I worked through the night fixing everything, and I worked right up until the meeting. Then the meeting ended at 1 PM -- I had worked 26 straight hours.

Sleep deprivation only makes sense in the life of the startup because that part of your life that you spend in a startup is suppose to be finite. Paul Graham covers this in his essay "How to make wealth":

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Sleep deprivation will always be a part of startup life -- that is natural. You face deadlines that determine whether the company will continue to exist.

In a big company, sleep deprivation doesn't make sense. I made this mistake when I first moved to big companies, and it took me awhile to unlearn the habits that I had acquired at startups. In a big company, your individual contribution is no longer a large part of of what makes the company go (you can shape the destiny of a company with 4 people, but not one that has 400 people). And in a big company, there are no particular deadlines that truly determine the fate of the company -- nothing that has the same urgency as "We are running out of money so we need tomorrow's potential investor to invest".

In a big company, in the future, I will be cautious about working an 80 week. But if I do a startup again, I know what I am signing up for.

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