Something that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out is that I don't need 8 hours sleep every night, just on average. The correct sleeping time turns out to be half the time I was previously awake for.
Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
51–60 of 63 posts
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#52Earlier 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…
One of XP's guiding principles is "Never work overtime for longer than one week."
It's OK to work an 80-hour week. You can get a lot done. But the next week needs to be a 40-hour week, or the pace isn't sustainable.
It isn't necessarily an iron-clad rule, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb. Past one week, you're just hurting your productivity.
My experience bears this out as a fairly accurate guide.
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#53The argument is made that evolution is based on a light-dark cycle, but is also based on predators who prefer to catch prey asleep. Survival favored those who could awaken and stay awake until a threat has passed or until sustenance was secure. Sleep is often a luxury, and not due to unhealthy life always. And often we are entranced by what we are doing, living our dreams. Sleep is personal and largely subjective, th…
As far as I can tell, some of us have ancestors who spent thousands of years above the Arctic circle, where the sun doesn't even go down every day anyway.
And there never were any other primates, or trees either.
In a lab based on extreme experimentation, there is no substitute for perseverance until a breakthrough is achieved. Even if you don't start out trying to emulate Edison, you end up that way.
In chemical research you don't just turn off the terminal when it gets dark outside and call it a day.
I never thought it was the least bit unusual that every grad student's lab had a cot near the desk. You really aren't going to get anything monumental done if you go home from work every single day.
What happens if you have a 36-hour experiment that must be carried to completion, or a client's chemical tanker at the dock for a brief 36-hour stay where they are loading or discharging products that no one else can handle either?
You wait a whole month for your ship to come in, what are you going to do, be too tired to finish the job?
What hurts your productivity more is the chemical toxicity much more than sleep irregularity. In the industrial chemical world, there is more effort to avoid exposure the more toxic a material is, so it ends up being those things which are intentionally ingested that compromise performance.
Caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are going to make you much more tired than you would be without them.
dano
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#54I 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…
RIP Intrade?
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I agree, and perhaps misspoke there.
However, I find that I have a limit to the number of hours I can program a day, and a number of hours in meetings I can have in a day, but the two don't interfere with each other much so long as I'm taking care of myself.
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 capital…
The dirty secret is drug use -- whether heavy caffeine or amphetamines. When we are young, pounding coffee or redbull is pretty much assumed necessary to get through a heavy credit load. Early 20s, stay up all night working and the body bounces back.
Start pushing 30 and in to middle age, these people are definitely using prescriptions drugs.
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meetings are work and are even sometimes productive, no different to banging out code
I agree, and perhaps misspoke there. However, I find that I have a limit to the number of hours I can program a day, and a number of hours in meetings I can have in a day, but the two don't interfere with each other much so long as I'm taking care of myself.
I think a healthy sustainable mix for maintaining flow over the long haul is probably something like - 4-5 hours coding, 0-2 hours meeting/collaboration, 1-2 hours email, 2 hours reading/writing, 1 hour lunch
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#58Over 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 substanti…
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's a deficit in the sense it starts to sum up for a few weeks and you get progressively tired until it starts to harm you, your brain, whatever. You can revert your tiredness sleeping well for a few days but the damage caused by prolonged periods with insufficient sleep it's done and maybe can't be undone.
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#59Four 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.
Calling Professor Russell Foster having no clue was a little bit harsh, sorry about that.
I wanted to point out that a biphasic sleep pattern (which is also a polyphasic sleep-pattern) is the natural way to sleep.
Due to the segmented sleep (at least 90 minutes between sleeps) the body produces prolactin, which makes the first sleep have more SWS and the second sleep more REM, therefore you sleep more efficiently and get along with less sleep: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9709935
In this article Professor Russell Foster even admits, that a biphasic sleepcycle is the norm: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783
study about natural biphasic sleepcicle in winter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10607034
this study suggests that monophasic sleeping was introduced with artificial light: http://web.archive.org/web/20110629110723/http://www.history...
Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
#60Four 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 ass…
See my above answer why you need less sleep when you sleep segmented.
As you realize correctly, its a social thing, not a evolutionary thing that we don't sleep segmented anymore.
I read Steve Pavlinas blog, still don't get it why he couldn't win over his wife to adapt to his sleep cycle, with all the benefits he pointed out :)