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Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

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Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#141

Post by jdavis703 »

gph wrote: post #71
mlcrypto wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do something about it bro. If you want something you gotta take it. Nobody is gonna come offering you a dream work week. But the catch 22 is you gotta lose some sleep to find time to develop some systems to make passive income

That might work for the OP or someone who is capable of earning enough to set up systems to make a passive income. But that's not a global solution to the problem. We can't all be lazy rent seeking drains on society.

You can make passive income from things besides software. Try writing a book, selling stock photography, making evergreen Youtube videos, etc.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#143

Post by itamarst »

rightos wrote: post #22

But do I need to be more productive? It's a tradeoff - I can go home and spend more social time, leisure time and put more personal time into my projects if I sleep less. The 2-3 hours of extra time I get by sleeping like crap allows me to do things I wouldn't otherwise get to do. Productivity couldn't improve these if there's no time left in the day to do them. It costs me at work, I'm sure of it, but it hasn't gott…

You're approaching productivity from the wrong angle. It's not about producing more, and especially not producing more while tired... it's about doing less unnecessary work. This requires thought, and is easier with a full night's sleep.

https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro...

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#144

Post by vkou »

Thiez wrote: post #124
eeereerews wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no such study. Galileo showed this was false with the following famous thought experiment : Suppose it were true. Join a heavy rock and a light rock by a cord and drop them from a tower. If the light rock falls slower, eventually the cord will be pulled taut and retard the fall of the heavier, so this system falls more slowly than the heavy rock alone. But the system is heavier than the heavy rock alone, so…

And yet a human with a parachute falls more slowly than a human with a parachute. I remain unconvinced of this thought experiment...

We don't strap parachutes to people because we think that heavier objects fall faster then lighter ones.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#145

Post by randcraw »

ashark wrote: post #50
ams6110 wrote: post #27

I feel like my natural body clock is a 28-hour day. If I have no reason to get up I'll sleep for about 10 hours, but then I'm not ready to sleep again for about 18 hours. I'm guessing the 10 hours is just making up for sleep debt and that might taper off if I could sleep as much as I wanted every night. But the realities of life (kids in school, work, kid's activities, etc.) mean that I have to be awake by about 6:45…

I used to think that about myself. Now I'm pretty sure it's just the result of having light pollution (lights outside candle temperature and brighter than three or four candles) including glowing screens, electronic device hyperstimulation, and the Internet info treadmill, after 9:00 or so. If I give myself a good long stretch of low light and no electronic toys my "28-hour clock" not-so-mysteriously turns into an or…

My natural day lasts considerably more than 24 hours, but only when TV/video is active. Without them, I'm ready for bed by 10 PM. If I still had any working grey cells, I'd run some week-long A/B experiments to verify and assess the impact of each. But I don't think I could live with all that silence, so...

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#146

Post by naravara »

coldtea wrote: post #126
_qbjt wrote: post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

> I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks) People also used to work much less back in the day -- well, except sharecroppers, slaves and the very poor. This changed with the advent of the industrial age. Farming work is (or used to be, before modern farming techniques) seasonal, and can be quite very light for the better part of the year. Professions like doctor, store owner, mer…

>Farming work is (or used to be, before modern farming techniques) seasonal, and can be quite very light for the better part of the year. Professions like doctor, store owner, merchant etc didn't require anyone to sit 8+ hours straight in some cubicle. Shops (in 19th century Paris or Chicago or London etc) weren't optimized to serve tons of customers as fast as possible like a modern chain. Small towns and villages -- where most of the population (the rural) in any country lived before 19th century -- were far more leisurely too.

You can kind of see this transition happening if you visit currently-industrializing countries like India or China.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#147

Post by tjic »

randcraw wrote: post #139
wmil wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the 40h/week ignores commutes. For some people that's an additional 15h/week. Also hunger-gatherers lived right beside the people they knew. They just had to step outside to meet up with friends to socialize.

15h / 5 days is 3h / day -- 1.5 hours each way, that's a long commute. The average commute in the US is 20 min each way. Suburbanites mostly jump to nearby suburbs. It's the urbanites & rurals who outlie, with interminable train rides or stops-and-gos via SUV & long highway drives to a bigger town an hour away. A map of US commute times: https://lifehacker.com/this-map-shows-the-average-commute-ti...

I did this for six months.

I live in NH, I got a well paying contract in MA, and they needed me to work 60 hrs/week to rescue a project.

The 60 hrs/week is key, because it made the ratio of billable hours to wasted hours plausible - 15 hours of commute to 40 of billable is terrible, but 15:60 made some sense.

Those six months (plus the side remote consulting gig I did on the weekend) almost killed me, but they also let me pay off about 1/3 of my mortgage in half a year.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#148

Post by rightos »

itamarst wrote: post #143
rightos wrote: post #22

But do I need to be more productive? It's a tradeoff - I can go home and spend more social time, leisure time and put more personal time into my projects if I sleep less. The 2-3 hours of extra time I get by sleeping like crap allows me to do things I wouldn't otherwise get to do. Productivity couldn't improve these if there's no time left in the day to do them. It costs me at work, I'm sure of it, but it hasn't gott…

You're approaching productivity from the wrong angle. It's not about producing more, and especially not producing more while tired... it's about doing less unnecessary work. This requires thought, and is easier with a full night's sleep. https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro...

However you define productivity, I still work the same number of hours in a given day, so whether it's more output or better output, it's still all the same to me. There's no reason for me to invest the extra hours in sleep to improve it when I can invest that time in things I enjoy. I don't see how that changes anything I said. My work is defined by hours, not goals, not lines of code, but hours.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#149

Post by passivepinetree »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #20

I feel like when I get 8-9 I am much more productive and have a much better mood. Seven for me is sort of the point where I can go throughout the day but I will be distracted. Six or less is really bad for me. I really notice when I get less sleep I make a bunch more comments on HN / reddit or use Twitter much more.

Likely because you're less focused/more susceptible to the quick reward and novelty that these sites provide.

I've noticed when I sleep better I can better focus on long-form entertainment (reading a novel vs. browsing HN, for example).

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#150

Post by wolfram74 »

lutorm wrote: post #25
_qbjt wrote: post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

Actually, studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies spent much less than 40h/week "working" and had more leisure time than we do. It's just recent history that's an anomaly...

I think the people GP was referring to were early industrial age folks before labor unions pushed for humane working conditions.
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