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What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

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Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#51

Post by mamcx »

grecy wrote: post #17
NathanKP wrote: post #13

I really wish I had that trait, but instead I have the exact opposite. I often need about twelve hours to feel fully rested, and even then usually require a coffee or two to feel productive. Some people suggested recently that maybe I have sleep apnea, so I'm planning to try a sleep study sometime soon.

Do you get much exercise? For me, the more I sleep and the more coffee I drink the more tired I feel. As soon as I throw in a bunch of exercise, I find I'm asleep within 30 seconds of hitting the pillow, and I'm awake ~5 minutes before my alarm after 8 hours, and I feel good. The more exercise I get, the less coffee I drink too, until I drink none, which is when I feel the best and least tired.

I exercise from 3-5 times week (doing P90x), and my energy is low and the sleep is a failure (I also can sleep 12+ and still need to take naps). I have a healthy lifestyle, and try several supplements, but still not find a way to be better...

Edit: 12+ hours not all the week. Most certainly a crash 1 time/w. The sleep/insommia vary each day. I have used sleep pills (make me sleep, but get grovvy all the day) and melatonin (sometimes work, but sometimes get me grovvy).

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#52

Post by monochr »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

> * “Cells don't sleep,” he said in his most quoted anti-sleep rant. “Fish swim in the water all night. Even a horse doesn't sleep. A man doesn't need any sleep.”* > Yes. Even when my kids sleep crazy amounts of hours I get annoyed. Teenagers can sleep probably for 12 hours straight, and I get so annoyed because I think they are wasting their lives. Why are you wasting your life sleeping? There are so many things tha…

This is the typical great man myth that gets promulgated by their publicists to make them seem more than human. As a rule they are either out right lies or greatly exaggerated, other myths of this type is Kennedy reading 1000 words per minute, Napoleon listening to reports, reading a letter and dictating laws all at the same time, or Stalin single handedly designing the first five year plan.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#53

Post by nathanb »

JimboOmega wrote: post #45
pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

> * “Cells don't sleep,” he said in his most quoted anti-sleep rant. “Fish swim in the water all night. Even a horse doesn't sleep. A man doesn't need any sleep.”* > Yes. Even when my kids sleep crazy amounts of hours I get annoyed. Teenagers can sleep probably for 12 hours straight, and I get so annoyed because I think they are wasting their lives. Why are you wasting your life sleeping? There are so many things tha…

Where did that first quote come from? Horses sleep (though they can standing up). So do fish, though it's not clear if they use the unihemisphere sleep trick that marine mammals use (so they can keep swimming). Given the great benefits of being conscious (alertness from predation, etc), there's clearly some biological reason that animals and humans sleep.

Uh, it's the Edison quote mentioned in the article...

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#54

Post by legohead »

occasionally I'll need to stay up really late, or for some random reason I'll wake up really early (sound outside wakes me up), and I'll actually feel more refreshed with 3-4 hours sleep than a full night. is this a common experience?

I've never purposely tried sleeping only 3-4 hours.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#55

Post by dreaminvm »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

> * “Cells don't sleep,” he said in his most quoted anti-sleep rant. “Fish swim in the water all night. Even a horse doesn't sleep. A man doesn't need any sleep.”* > Yes. Even when my kids sleep crazy amounts of hours I get annoyed. Teenagers can sleep probably for 12 hours straight, and I get so annoyed because I think they are wasting their lives. Why are you wasting your life sleeping? There are so many things tha…

Agreed. The level of productivity for most of us who need 8 hours drops substantially when we go above or below that threshold.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#56

Post by nemo »

JimboOmega wrote: post #45
pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

> * “Cells don't sleep,” he said in his most quoted anti-sleep rant. “Fish swim in the water all night. Even a horse doesn't sleep. A man doesn't need any sleep.”* > Yes. Even when my kids sleep crazy amounts of hours I get annoyed. Teenagers can sleep probably for 12 hours straight, and I get so annoyed because I think they are wasting their lives. Why are you wasting your life sleeping? There are so many things tha…

Where did that first quote come from? Horses sleep (though they can standing up). So do fish, though it's not clear if they use the unihemisphere sleep trick that marine mammals use (so they can keep swimming). Given the great benefits of being conscious (alertness from predation, etc), there's clearly some biological reason that animals and humans sleep.

It was from Thomas Edison, so from long ago and far from an authority on animal sleeping habits. There are a vast number and variety in species of fish, some appear to do the unisphere thing, some actually go dormant and rest without swimming like zebra danios, while some don't show any signs of resting like mackerel. You can't really generalize too much about the whole lot of them.

Also, horses sleep.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#57

Post by Mahn »

Afton wrote: post #18
NathanKP wrote: post #13

I really wish I had that trait, but instead I have the exact opposite. I often need about twelve hours to feel fully rested, and even then usually require a coffee or two to feel productive. Some people suggested recently that maybe I have sleep apnea, so I'm planning to try a sleep study sometime soon.

Do it. Seriously. I can't believe the change in my life since discovering (in my 40s!) that I've suffered from sleep apnea my entire teen/adult life.

Out of curiosity, in which ways did your life change? How did you adjust or what do you do differently now that you know?

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#58

Post by sedachv »

legohead wrote: post #54

occasionally I'll need to stay up really late, or for some random reason I'll wake up really early (sound outside wakes me up), and I'll actually feel more refreshed with 3-4 hours sleep than a full night. is this a common experience? I've never purposely tried sleeping only 3-4 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

I use this pattern when I have a lot of work to do outside of my day job.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#59

Post by spacehome »

mooreds wrote: post #19

Fascinating. Made me think of 'Beggars in Spain', an SF series that is well worth the read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain

Interesting.

But the pre-existing variance in people's productivity is already an order of magnitude or more. A 50% bump might be significant, but it's hard to imagine it would be society-changing.

Re: What It’s Like to Need Hardly Any Sleep

#60

Post by kybernetyk »

ashark wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #2

I cannot relate, I need 7+, but I can imagine how much more you could get done if you had 20 hours a day to do it in. My grandmother was a short sleeper, she usually slept from midnight to 4am her whole life.

I've got a friend who can get by on ~5 hours/night pretty much indefinitely, without feeling the kind of awful brain-numbing fatigue and dangerous (for e.g. driving) levels of tiredness that I do with more than one night in a row of less than ~7 hours of sleep. A full 8-hour night is sleeping in to him. The key to understanding why this is so great is to compare the extra time not to the total waking time that others…

>That new TV show that's supposed to be really good? He's seen it. All those Criterion movies you've been meaning to watch? He's seen them all. Twice. This year's Oscar nominees? Yes. Even the documentaries and shorts. Video games? All of them that matter and most of the ones that don't. That one comic book series you heard good things about? He's read it.

Thanks. After reading that I don't feel too bad for not being a "short sleep mutant".

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