Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation • Hacker News Board

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#61

Post by 5partan » Mon, May 19, 2014, 11:15 AM UTC

normloman wrote: post #41

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.

maybe i should have used the term biphasic sleep, see my answer above with some studies.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#62

Post by tripzilch » Mon, May 19, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

eshvk wrote: post #31

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…

> 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…

> There was more memorizing rather than abstract problem solving.

FWIW, you need sleep for memorizing as well. Stuff just won't stick if you don't cement it with a good night's rest.

Cramming it all the night just before an exam does work though, I did that myself too, but I think it only worked because I already had a solid foundation. Also that will never work for "insight" type of questions, just rote memorization.

Re: Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

#63

Post by tripzilch » Tue, May 20, 2014, 9:32 AM UTC

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #51

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.

Interesting observation. Although, if you go purely with that guideline, you'll find yourself out-of-sync with day and night pretty quickly.

You'd need an additional constraint to make sure that the duration of a sleep/wake cycle adds up to 24h, on average.

Some soft constraint such as "try to go to bed at a sensible time" will probably do it though.