Sleep as a Competitive Advantage • Hacker News Board

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#171

Post by mattgreenrocks » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #160

zo1 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Considering the brain needs to sleep to fixate memories, your approach is better. " There are two other components to this that you're glossing over. Sleep helps with long-term memory. So if your plan is to study-ahead and be prepared for the exam, fine. But then the second component comes in to play. People that are cramming for the exam are doing so because they didn't study ahead. For that second group of people…

I know sleep is crucial for long term memories, but I also thought a lack of sleep affects all forms of recollection?

I had a period of a few years where I slept very poorly due to allergies. During that time, I was practicing guitar intensively. Despite lots of practice, my playing ability barely improved the whole time; I was not retaining the muscle memory necessary to continue to improve.

Now I practice much less and focus on my health. My abilities seem to increase on their own on a slow-but-noticeable basis.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#172

Post by contingencies » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 6:32 PM UTC

incision wrote: post #61

viraptor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of us have forgotten what it really feels like to be awake.” This may be one part of it. Some time ago, I'd definitely tell you I'm fine with little sleep. You can do it if you sleep very little every night. It's quite easy to adapt to, for example during university exam times But then after some years you realise you're not actually fine. You just don't remember how different is it to sleep longer. I'm still…

>' You just don't remember how different is it to sleep longer.' Exactly. Not too long ago the combination of child, work and school forced me to completely re-evaluate how I was spending my time and what is actually important to me. One big change I ended up making was getting to bed at the same time every night and clocking a consistent 8 hours. Within a week or so the difference was remarkable in both my mood and…

You just don't remember how different is it to sleep longer.

Exercise is like that, too. If you stay relatively stationary for a few weeks, then get out and do some serious exercise, you are more awake than you remember possible.

Similarly, smoking (especially green) and drinking are like that, too. When you stop, it takes awhile to get over, then it's amazing.

Probably being outside in nature in general has additional benefits, re: general sensory stimulation, removal of droning mechanical/electric noise, variety of light conditions, rhythmic subtleties of tone in the shadow of a moving tree, etc.

You notice northern hemisphere people that come to the tropics revert near-instantly to depression when boarding flights back home in their winter. I saw it in a set of Russians in Vietnam earlier this year... it was incredibly well choreographed!

PS. I went on a brief hunt via thesaurus.com and Wikipedia for an effect along the lines of 'acclimatisation' but failed to come up with a trans-disciplinary term. Please post if you know of one.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#173

Post by orand » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 6:37 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #32

bgitarts wrote: post #19

Has anyone tried polyphasic sleep cycles as a way to get less sleep without losing cognitive function?

Lots of people try it, and some of them post articles here about how it feels starting out. I've never heard of anyone actually sticking to it. I also haven't seen any of these reports that give actual objective measures of before/after cognitive function (they don't even have to be that rigorous, maybe a log of scores/times at tetris or dual-n-back or sudoku or 2048 or something), just subjective reports which as TF…

The author of the Ubersleep book is an example of someone actually sticking with it.

http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/the-ubersleep-book/

Another well-documented example is Steve Pavlina.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#174

Post by toddkaufmann » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 7:25 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #134

daniel-cussen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to sleep nine hours a day. Two things, I noticed, reduced that: stimulants, and learning more about garbage collection algorithms. The first is pretty obvious in its effect, but the second surprised me: I was sleeping about 50 minutes less per data. It might be a coincidence, but there it is.

You mean computer garbage collection, or some kind of mental equivalent?

You should try JIT and lazy evaluation.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#175

Post by MrZongle2 » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 7:32 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #71

socrates1998 wrote: post #36

Honestly, I think a bigger issue is what time we actually go to sleep. I think a lot professionals just don't get to sleep on time for the required 7-8 hours. If you get up at 6 or 7 in the morning, that means you are deep asleep by 10 or 11 pm. I just don't think a lot of sleep deprived people are doing that. At least that's alway been my experience.

This. What's missing from this article, is a discussion about ideal sleep TIMES. Not everyone is meant to sleep from 10-6. Yes, you can fudge your sleep cycle and you can adjust, but only so much. I'm naturally a night owl. With no alarm clock, and no obligations, I will "naturally" fall asleep at 3am, and wake up at 11. In times of my life when I've been able to do this, the 8 hours that I would get then FAR TRUMPED…

What's missing from this article, is a discussion about ideal sleep TIMES.

Yes, yes, yes!

Personally, I feel better rested after 6 hours of sleep if I get to sleep by 10 than 8+ hours of sleep if I don't get to bed until after midnight.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#176

Post by semerda » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

All good and great that people write about the value of power naps. And I totally agree of it's value. I love power napping. The energy boost & mental clarity it provides is awesome.

But, I am still yet to see a startup/mature business declare proudly that they encourage nap time and/or list that in their benefits web page. Maybe some already do? But I haven't seen any yet. Please share links.

I am curious to see whether the reality of the business world allows for this natural boost or are we still deep down driven by old fashioned work ethics.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#177

Post by cheald » Tue, Jul 01, 2014, 11:58 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #164

donflamenco wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong URL, try: https://justgetflux.com/

For the Linux users among us, there's redshift, which does about the same thing.

And there's Lux for Android, as well.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#178

Post by cheald » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 12:05 AM UTC

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…

Well, for many programmers at least, the marginal value of time is not constant. An additional hour when I'm "in the zone" is massively more productive than my first hour of the day.

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#179

Post by RBerenguel » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 7:15 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #106

mercnet wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wrote a bash script for this. Press a key on the keyboard and keep it pressed. When you fall asleep you'll release the key. But instead of waking you up instantly, it let you sleep for N minutes after the loss of keypress (also limited the total time given to the "time to fall asleep"+"sleeping time," so if you had 20 minutes for the nap, you could limit it as "sleep 10 with max 20")

Re: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

#180

Post by itchyouch » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 12:02 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #108

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Totally agree with this. On the daya that I eat well (salads, small portions) and exercise, the following evenings are met with deeper sleep and less of it. I can function on 7-8 hours as opposed to 10-11 the following day. But it is definitely an unpopular opinion to express. "Your life sucks cuz of your bad habits..."