Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

mechanical_fish

It doesn't work. You can't change the amount of sleep you need by any significant amount. If you consistently shortchange yourself by a small amount each night, you may be able to convince yourself that you're getting more done ... but you'll actually be less sharp, less productive, less healthy, and much less happy (seriously -- it has big effects on your mood).

Read a book like Maas's Power Sleep :

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Per...

I'd recommend a better book but I don't know of one yet. I spend my time sleeping rather than hacking sleep.

You can tinker with when you sleep (using naps, etc.) to try and improve the quality of your sleep and adjust the times of day when you are most awake for maximum productivity. Just realize that you're basically rearranging your sleep and not magically reducing it.

If you can't find time to sleep the 8.5 hours that you need, you need to fix something else. Find a partner. Hire an assistant. Outsource. Prioritize. Postpone unimportant features. Get a better paying job with fewer hours. Play less World of Warcraft. Kill your television. Read David Allen or Tim Ferriss. Set noprocrast to numbers like "1024".

Excellent point. A while ago I was determined that sleeping less would make me more productive. Then I started actively paying attention to how much time I was wasting one way or another during the day (it wasn't anything obvious like playing WoW or watching too much TV).

One of the key things I discovered is the need to have a chunk of undisturbed time so I can really be productive. So I started going to work later in the morning (flexible schedule) and working more at night (guaranteed to have less distractions, even if you wanted to watch TV you can't find anything on).

Good point. Your body needs what it needs. You can self-medicate with caffeine or other stimulants to try and hack the system, but they end up cutting in to your next nights sleep.

As an ER nurse, I've worked nights for 14 years. And, for the last 5, I've gone completely caffeine free. I've felt better than I have in years. It's amazing how easy it is to get into a (sleep deprivation -> stimulant -> sleep deprivation) cycle. Why? Because caffeine stays in your system for 24-26 hours. So, that cup of coffee that you had yesterday is still in your system when you go to bed the next night. And, the caffeine is stimulating you while you sleep preventing you from getting the normal cycles/amounts of the stages of sleep that you'd be in normally.

It takes a few weeks to come down off the caffeine addiction, but after you do, you feel so much better.

~24 hours? Interesting. I've used coffee as a sleep aid: when I really need to go to sleep at X in order to get 8 hours before some important event, drinking coffee at 4 hours before X seems to help me sleep, due to the huge crash between 3 and 4 hours after the caffeine hits.

At least that's whay my Doc told me last time I saw him. Noodling around online, it seems that the half-life of caffeine can vary anywhere from 2-3 hours to 100 hours depending on the person, their metabolism and if they smoke or not.

Play less WoW? No way... get real.

I once read that there's a window of time between 11pm and 1am when your adrenals recharge most effectively. If you're not asleep during this window you miss the benefit and will tend to have higher levels of stress hormones. I used to have some moderate acne and I found that being in bed by 11 usually cleared it right up, which makes sense if you consider the link between hormones and acne.

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