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Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

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Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#101

Post by robg »

larrys wrote: post #97
robg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that people report (and their activity data suggests) sleeping but that the sympathetic response - "fight-or-flight" - didn't seem to turn down significantly from being awake. The best analogy, I think, is that your body should flip to idle during sleep, but we see that you're still running very hot.

It would be interesting if you could correlate that to what the person is doing physically during each sleep type. By way of a video device (similar to what is done with that part of a sleep study) that captures and can be played back or analyzed. I was actually going to set this up for a person with sleep apnea but they passed away before I could get the solution cobbled together. To summarize: Get a normal video ca…

The accelerometer is actually really helpful. We are naturally paralyzed during deep sleep and REM, so that helps to distinguish those stages. Lighter sleep and being awake is easier as a kind, but less so as a degree.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#102

Post by garrickvanburen »

vanderZwan wrote: post #74
AhtiK wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely I feel dizzy without alarm clock and it takes a bit too much time to get to high energy. With alarm clock there's a certain rush to jump into action. I wish I had the same rush without an alarm clock.

I know I'm going to state something obvious, but have you tried going to bed earlier? I've honestly met people who try to get up earlier, but don't realize the easiest way to get up early (in the longer term, of course) is to catch sleep early.

This.

It took me years to realize simply going to be easier was, not only the obvious answer, but also the cheapest & most sustainable. https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/how-i-learned-to-get-up-...

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#103

Post by wainstead »

robg wrote: post #79
dang wrote: post #69

Robg, who posted this, is a longtime HNer whose current startup makes a watch that monitors your stress level. He wears the watch all the time and told me that one of his biggest lessons from it so far was about sleep. Rob, do you want to repeat that here? I thought it was interesting; maybe others would too.

Sure! It took me a decade as a neuroscientist to realize that sleep is the inverse of stress. That's physiologically speaking - stress is the sympathetic system; sleep is the parasympathetic system. We're seeing a type of high stress sleep. We don't know what it means or why. But the aim is to continue to drill in - a kind of citizen science of how sleep and stress interact. What questions would folks what to see ans…

I have been a fan of power naps for the past year or so; I work from home so taking 25 minutes to nap in mid-afternoon is not a problem.

I just completed the program in "Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan" (Williams, Penman) and found in those eight weeks I didn't feel a need to nap in the afternoon. I just didn't get sleep late in the day.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#105

Post by AhtiK »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #102
vanderZwan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm going to state something obvious, but have you tried going to bed earlier? I've honestly met people who try to get up earlier, but don't realize the easiest way to get up early (in the longer term, of course) is to catch sleep early.

This. It took me years to realize simply going to be easier was, not only the obvious answer, but also the cheapest & most sustainable. https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/how-i-learned-to-get-up-...

hah! Thank you for the link! Your experience definitely rings a bell -- I'm now a father of a 6 months old and I did my fair share of experiments with Zeo a few years ago.

By the way, there is a special firmware going around for Zeo that if installed will store the data unencrypted and also enables sending "real-time" info to the serial port located at the back of the device (I managed to read this data successfully using a python script that was also provided).

If you're interested in that custom firmware and realtime data schematics&code and not finding from the web, ping me and I'll look up from the archives!

For me wearing zeo more than 5 days in a row became unfomfortable, how long did you use it constantly to get to this 6.30am wakeup time?

You mention 18 months but I guess it's not possible to wear the headband for that many months in a row comforably?

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#106

Post by bryanlarsen »

mercnet wrote: post #73
blrgeek wrote: post #3

Naps save me every time. Just when my work starts flagging and quality starts dropping, a 20min nap makes me feel almost as fresh as I am coming into the office in the morning. Most others at work feel awkward about taking naps - even with me evangelising naps :o)

When I was at my company's office in China, I envied my coworkers that took naps after lunch. They would just tilt their head back and relax/nap. I tried it but my head always falls forward waking me up.

Many people see that as an advantage of sleeping in chairs. The point of a nap is to get to a state where you're totally relaxed, not to spend a significant amount of time in it. You don't want to get into the deep sleep state which takes ~1 hour to wake up from.

The apocryphal example is Salvador Dali: he held a spoon above a metal pan to wake him up as soon as he dropped the sppon.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#107

Post by Bahamut »

I learned early on the value of sleep - a good amount of rest allows you to be focused longer during dredges of work.

From my own experience, it helped immensely during grad school, and it helps me now with my career. I almost never have to wake up for an alarm - I naturally wake up at a good time, without the added stressor of a hurried morning. All it takes is a little discipline and advanced planning to get yourself prepared.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#108

Post by Mz »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #100
Mz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rayiner, My ex husband often went to work on 4 to 6 hours of sleep. He was career military and he had some sleep issues. On weekends, he would stay up late and by Sunday night he could not sleep before midnight or 2:00 am. And by Wednesday, it was not at all uncommon for him to fall asleep on the couch either right after eating dinner or in the middle of eating (or, sometimes, before eating) because he was so short o…

Actually there was an article a couple years ago about "super sleepers" in the NYTimes. People who only need, at most, 6 hours sleep to feel completely refreshed. I believe they had their genome copied hoping to find why they can do this. Who knows, there might be a gene therapy or pill to need less sleep one day.

Yeah, I did say "Some people" not "EVERYONE."

Also, I generally sleep less these days while being better rested because I have worked hard on improving my health. So I think there are things people can do to work on this issue but, for the most part, when I try to talk about stuff like that, I get shouted down, pissed on, and treated pretty horribly. So I say stuff like that a lot less than I used to. I don't think you need "good genes" per se to be well rested on less sleep. I think you just need good health -- and I think most people are less healthy than they really think (not exactly a popular opinion to express though).

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#109

Post by dasil003 »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #44

I don't think that people who function well with little sleep have a significant advantage anyway. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that they can get something like 1/16th or so more done in a day - 1/16th of what? A six month project? Delivering 11 days earlier than the other side on something that takes six months isn't likely to be a make or break point on a contract, even if their whole team could work like t…

Totally agree on this. The low-hanging fruit isn't squeezing in a couple more hours, its improving the quality of the hours you currently have. If you can do 8 hours every weekday of truly productive time spent focused on the right things you'll run circles around most of these 100-hour-week braggarts anyway.

Of course if you are truly god's gift to white-collar workaholism then sure those additional hours can add up, but if you sacrifice sleep and thus cognitive function you're shooting yourself in the foot to get there and probably don't even realize it because of the haze you're living in.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#110

Post by dzhiurgis »

eric_cc wrote: post #96
adestefan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step is to kick a caffeine habit if you have one. That means no coffee, no tea, no caffeinated soda.

I never had a problem falling asleep but I kicked my daily morning cup of coffee and I can't believe how much energy I have. I used to feel a little fuzzy when I first woke up until I had my coffee but now I wake up so full of energy and feel great. I never realized just how negative caffeine is on your energy level.

Likewise. Stopped drinking it and for a week withdrawal was hard, but after that I would wake up in 3 minutes, rather than snooze for another 20. I do still crave for it, but one hour into the day you forget it and become normal.

Coffee is such a short term fix with implications for the rest of the night.

The best thing is that I actually sleep same amount, but am better rested. Perhaps it's not the same for everyone, but I feel more people should try it. Caffeine is the nicotine of our era.

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