How a good night's sleep became a status symbol | Hacker News Reader

How a good night's sleep became a status symbol

theguardian.com

124 pointsvenomsnake110 comments

"And when, some days afterwards, it was announced that from now on the pigs would get up an hour later in the mornings than the other animals, no complaint was made about that either." -- Animal Farm, George Orwell

Being able to get a proper night's sleep one of the things I love most about being a "solopreneur". I had a job for a while and days were just too short. I'd come home and before I knew it, it was 1-2am.

I currently work 4-5 hours a day, yet get close to a full days work done because of increased productivity due to sleeping well.

May I ask what business you're in? I want to do something like what you're doing. I only need to make 35 - 40k to sustain my current lifestyle.

I've made a decent amount of money selling apps through the iOS and Mac app store over the last few years. Making $35-40k online shouldn't be too hard, if you put your mind to it. However, most of the projects you can make money with won't be exciting from an engineering PoV. I found it's often either 1) a cool project; or 2) a money maker.

Another thing is that you need a decent amount of savings. Even if you have a product that brings in 3-5k per month, having another $50/100/200k in the bank gives you tremendous piece of mind. It also helps with potential cashflow problems. I personally don't take on debt, unless it helps me make more money (i.e. on an investment).

Where are you based? Living somewhere with a low cost of living + low taxes is probably the best way to do it, so you can build up capital to kickstart an investment portfolio. For example: having $200-500k invested in the stock market will yield you, on average, 7% per year. That's $14-$35k per year. You want to be working towards a number, so you can achieve financial independence.

Thanks for answering. I live in a very low-cost area in the midwest. I have a pretty stable situation and most of my debts (other than mortgage) are completely paid off. As far as projects go, I've been looking into tiny projects that can return a tiny amount of recurring income, and getting some experience that way. I have yet to make my first buck on a product I've created myself.

Is it ok if I email you and ask a couple of questions?

Sure

Wow, you should totally ruin your lifestyle and join the 80k club. You could be so much happier with the extra money than with time to sleep, have friends and have hobbies! At least, you wouldn't be a poor anymore...!

What's amazing is how much a full time long hours job costs you. Transportation at peak hours, clothing and shoes (biz casual or suits), dry cleaning, eating lunch out, vacationing around public holidays so everything is more expensive, childcare if applicable, and all the other things you might end up automating because you don't have time (dinner delivery, laundry drop off, house cleaning).

Indeed, but it clearly doesn't have to be this way. My company lets me work remotely and does not have set holidays but gives employees an extra ten days or so a year to take off as they see fit. Not all jobs can do this but I'd venture to guess most office jobs could, so it really comes down to that thing employers like to boast about that they almost never have: corporate culture. I'll take this any day over the stupidity that passes for corporate culture in many companies these days.

> the other things you might end up automating because you don't have time (dinner delivery, laundry drop off, house cleaning).

That's not automating, that's outsourcing.

>because of increased productivity due to sleeping well.

I imagine not being distracted by office life, office politics, needless meetings, two commutes, etc has more to do here than just sleep.

I've been wondering what the margins are on mattresses. You see stores selling them all over the place. There's usually only one or two employees in there, and they're devoid of shoppers most of the week (weekends are big days for them). So they have to pay rent + utilities and presumably commission, but are selling these items one-at-a-time to only occasional customers. The mark-ups have to be insane to support that.

Marketplace did a story on exactly this phenomenon: http://www.marketplace.org/2016/05/02/world/why-are-there-so...

To sum it up: "Mattress stores have low overhead, low labor costs and higher-than-usual profit margins, Sam Woods said, Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations for Mattress Firm.

“If you sold three or four beds a day, and your average ticket is $1,000, that’s a $4,000 day, times 365. All of a sudden you’ve got more than a million-dollar business there,” he said."

Furniture items of all types have a large markup. It's because volume is so low and as a shop owner you have a lot of money tied up in inventory.

According to "The Straight Dope" markups are "Stupenduous", at each level of the chain, and manufacturing competition is actually limited.

"Consumer Reports puts gross profit margins on mattresses at 30 to 40 percent, both for wholesalers and for retailers, and up to 50 percent for makers of super-luxe products."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3265/why-are-there-...

Check out Tuft & Needle, there was an article on HN a few years back

https://www.tuftandneedle.com/about/truth/

I know nothing about the mattress business, but many shops, especially those on fancy addresses, lose money and instead function as branding instruments. Its possible that the stores you've observed work as showrooms and have attached warehouses, servicing a wholesale operation where the money is actually made.

There's a mattress store in Milwaukee that has no employees at all. I saw one of their locations in a mall. Just a bunch of beds, a phone number painted on the wall if you have questions, and a computer in the corner for ordering. I thought it was brilliant. Who needs employees?

That is a good idea! I quite fancy a few new mattresses and a computer.

This has been explored in the press recently and apparently the margins are very high. The sales experience is also poor as you'll see an ad for a $599 bed and when you visit the store you'll get an aggressive upsell. Worse, if you fight the upsell, the $599 bed is magically out of stock or will require 4-6 weeks delivery while the other more expensive items can be delivered tomorrow.

My last two beds have been from either Costco or Sam's Club. No high pressure sales, less bullshit, and better pricing. The one time my wife and I went to a mattress store, we paid probably 30% more than the warehouse club prices and the bed's springs went bad years earlier than expected.

I highly recommend avoiding mattress stores.

There are tons of mattress companies trying to "disrupt" the market right now. Leesa, Casper, Tuft and Needle, etc. I personally went with FloBeds (older company, all-latex mattresses, hippy dippy, in California) and couldn't be happier.

http://www.themattressunderground.com has lots of good info if you're in the market. Casper and the rest aren't bad deals, but there is better / different stuff out there without the terrible mattress store business model.

I just find it easier to lay down on the bed at the warehouse club to see if I like it than taking a chance online. I lean towards a firm mattress but not too firm. Its sometimes tough finding the one I want and doing mattress returns via the internet sounds like a nightmare.

Casper has a 100 day no-questions-asked return policy. We ended up returning one of their mattresses and it couldn't have been easier. They send somebody by your house to pick it up.

Many of these companies will offer you no questions asked money back guarantee after 90 or even 120 days of trying it in your home. That's got to be better than 5 minutes at the warehouse club trying to imagine what it's like to sleep on.

Check out Saatva.

Just depends. I believe the average is somewhere between 40-60% for most name-brand mattresses. However, off-brand mattresses probably have higher margins, due to them being cheaper in general.

Unbranded products are commodities and therefore should have lower margins.

Seems the parent used "off-brand mattresses" and you used "unbranded products", which is quite a bit different

Can you elaborate for me? I thought those two were synonyms.

Unbranded generally means generic, off-brand usually signifies it's branded, but not with a recognizable brand. Generic products are generally cheaper, but off-brand products can try to masquerade as higher-market items (especially when you're dealing with a purchase as infrequent as a mattress) and can claim higher margins.

What would you call something made in the 3rd shift? Where they use the same materials and factory they use for making branded gear, but don't put the brand on it?

It's not necessarily when/how they're made (although that's part of it), but how they're marketed. Take soft drinks for example.

    Brand-name: Dr. Pepper  
    Off-brand: Dr. Perky   
    Unbranded/Generic: "Soda" in a white can

Generic or unbranded, depending on how the product is labeled. The thing with those two labels is that, since you don't have someone actively trying to maintain those brands, you as a customer don't know if they're actually using the same materials and factory (or at least that's the theory behind why a brand would be worthwhile at all).

We have a family connection to get dealer pricing on mattresses. A $3,000 brand-name mattress set is under $1,000 delivered.

Are these actually any better than beds from a place like Leesa or Casper?

I don't have any experience with those brands. We have a foam/innerspring hybrid mattress that is a good mix of soft surface with overall very firm support. It's also like 200 pounds so it doesn't shift when your partner moves.

The first picture is a still from the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", btw. The sleeping woman with the cat is Audrey Hepburn.

But this is fucked up:

>According to the Times, most of the A-Team can only endure about 12 months of the work because it’s so taxing. The low pay also means many of them take second jobs. Basically, they don’t sleep so that Huffington can

So she knows how important sleep is (even wrote a book about it), but she doesn't pay her employees enough so they can get a good night's sleep, too?

hmm -- no mention here of the rising cost of silence. It is very expensive to purchase 8 hours of quiet in a major city.

Depends on the city and the building materials used.

After moving to Germany, I was blown away by the property prices (relative to comparable buildings internationally) and the building materials.

This is a typical German door, with a bevel: http://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/AIA/UploadedImag...

Typically these have a matching rubber seal, which dramatically reduces noise and draughts: https://www.modern-doors.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/...

Additionally the apartment walls are like a bunker, which means you don't hear traffic, trains or your neighbours even if you live in a city centre.

I am always impressed the building standards and systems in Germany.

I had a look at these doors as I was intruiged and beguiled by them. They always felt substantial and well-engineered to me. I found that one typically buys a 'door set' which includes a frame and door which have been made to work, lock, seal etc together. You can then fix the door set into your building. In the UK this is not typically the case, I don't know about the states or elsewhere.

The systems for tiling are also wonderful and exported throughout the world (see Schluter). There is a trend of concealing toilet cisterns by companies such as Gerberit, although I hear these aren't as reliable as the doors. I'm still on the lookout for more of these systems (I can see there's a standard for residential electric circuit breakers, I haven't got to the bottom of those yet). I love how well thought-out they are.

Germans are civil engineering Gods. Here's a factory-made, German Huf Haus, which was built in a factory in Germany, and shipped over from Germany to the UK on the back of a truck, and then installed on-site in just one week:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx0k9r_se04e06-grand-design...

I'm surprised to hear those heavy duty doors are not available internationally, they utterly destroy any interior door in terms of quality that I was familiar with growing up.

I can tell you that you can throw a full blown house party without the neighbours hearing a peep, and you almost never use the heating if you live a few floors up (a few days per year at most due to the completely sealed building and the rising heat from downstairs neighbours).

Yes those Huf Häuser are amazing.

I found that there were suppliers of the doors in the UK but I haven't looked further afield. The windows (opening two different directions) are also similarly impressive though much more widespread. I spend half my time in Germany trying to look out for these things and marvelling at them.

Now that you mention it, I have one of those "floating" toilets, very similar to this one, including the recessed flush button, except in grey: http://www.decraplastics.co.uk/sanitaryware/images/geberit%2...

The nice thing is, you can easily hoover and mop under the cistern very quickly, instead of dust gathering behind it like with a typical toilet. It's a simple, unassuming design too, does just the job and stays out of the way otherwise.

Other details that I've noticed is every single door, inside and out, has that bevel/seal combination I mentioned, and not just in higher-end building like offices either but also regular apartments.

Yes those are the toilets! I was amazed by them and found that the flush control clicks out and the access to the cistern is behind it, and that's why typically the flush button is so large, because you just tile the whole cistern into the wall and mount the toilet to it. Interesting design. I've read that it isn't without its problems and has to be installed quite carefully. But it seems very widespread in Germany.

The doors - yes. With beautiful solidity. I had a look and possibly Grauthoff is a name of one manufacturer. When I was last in Berlin I kept looking for labels or manufacturer marks but I couldn't find any. I daresay someone in construction in Germany would immediately know.

Germany can also get away with more solid wall materials due to a relative lack of earthquakes I think. I could be totally wrong.

I'm drooling now.

Any chance that stuff (doors and whatnot) is available for sale in or to the US? I'm in a crazy noisy American city with 19th century levels of noise isolation (literally).

I don't know any brands for doors, but try googling for brands and see if there are US distributors. The doors are usually solid all the way through (none of this plywood nonsense with cardboard in the middle) in addition to the bevel + rubber padding around the edge.

Failing that, some of the major German "baumarkt" (building supplies stores) chains:

http://www.hornbach.com/de/index.html

http://www.obi.de/decom/home.html

https://www.toom-baumarkt.de/

Use google translate and see what you get. It might be worth investigating the pricing on a shipping container if you have an upcoming renovation or build in mind, shipping is cheap these days due to the global supply glut. If you have a friend who wants to do a project, a 40 foot container will cost you the same whether it's 10% or 100% full so you split the cost (weight doesn't matter). Try a shipping forwarder to the US or maybe you know someone in Germany and order to their address, and forward it.

I had a look at the UK and found a company called http://www.doorsets.org.uk. These guys look like they import these kind of doors into the UK, and they say their brands are manufactured by a company called Grauthoff. They have an English site at http://www.grauthoff.com/en/ - I couldn't find any USA importers but there might be some leads for you to try out there. Best of luck. Perhaps someone from Grauthoff can tell you if they export, or possibly there are companies similar to Grauthoff.

> I am always impressed the building standards and systems in Germany.

Our German friend constantly remarks about how terrible the roads are here. And not even like roads that I'd consider bad (I-95 in New Jersey). Ones like GW Parkway that I thought were pretty good.

I can tell you the Autobahn is being constantly maintained, it seems like there's roadworks everywhere. Another interesting thing I didn't know about it is that you are expected to have your car in tip-top condition for driving at night, as there's virtually no street lighting on it.

Are these things required by code or are German consumers just very discerning?

How can I learn more about this stuff?

I guess we Germans take pride in our engineering. I don't know about the code, but I could very easily imagine it being stricter than in th U.S.

For example, anecdotally, a major reason for Germans to oppose TTIP is that we're concerned about our standards in consumer and health protection and build quality. U.S. standards are perceived to be much lower (although the reality is of course not always like that).

You can read more about EU energy efficiency requirements here:

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-efficiency/buil...

You can be sure Germany had a primary role in establishing these standards.

> hmm -- no mention here of the rising cost of silence. It is very expensive to purchase 8 hours of quiet in a major city.

Not really expensive if you are only considering sleep.

http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/laser-lite

I buy them by the 200 count for about $30, works out to $0.15 per pair. I started using these for motorcycling years ago then woodwork and blacksmithing or any time I use loud machines. For sleeping I use them a couple of times before throwing them away, for other activities they're single use.

I also run a fan in my bedroom and have a cheap ($20) white-noise generator for use with a baby that I can use when traveling.

While this won't solve your problem, I find that good foam earplugs improve my quality of sleep immensely. They are reusable, washable and cost next to nothing (eg https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00374LCFS). Also I have this mask for sleeping when it is light outside and it's worth every penny (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00939UXCY/).

This is one of the biggest reasons that I (happily) choose to live in the suburbs. It is silent at night. Some people seem to consider this a bad thing ("it's so boring!"), but I find that I sleep much better than I ever have when I have lived in cities.

You're right. You would think that insane housing prices would at least include a bit of soundproofing here and there.

You pay for the location, not construction. And the US is infamous for being cost driven, not quality driven. Cheapest possible way to get at the given location means cheapest possible construction.

I find the conclusion of the article that focus on sleep is a short lived fad is wrong.

People have been trying to hack sleep for a long time, unsuccessfully.

I hope one day we can, but I doubt it. At best you can trick your body into reaching your REM cycle faster via activities like meditation.

Personally, plenty of sleep is my secret weapon along with exercise. As the world is trying to hack sleep and cut corners, I find resting and taking care of my body makes me much more effective than the sleepless zombies around me.

Although getting enough sleep is important, it's surprisingly hard for people to get quality sleep. I work at ŌURA (https://ouraring.com), the wellness ring that is focused on analysing your sleep. It's pretty visible in people's sleep data that if they focused more on properly relaxing before they go to bed, they would sleep better. The time of the lowest heart-rate of the night is a good indicator how relaxed your body were when you went to bed. Alcohol, late workouts, stressful life situation all affect this.

What about sex? Is the morning the best time?

I was waiting for some shocking revelation in the article, but she says what everybody doing sports knows damn well for centuries - sleep restores body and mind, and you should be clocking 8 hours consistently to get most of it.

the end of the article is actually the most interesting. it just puzzles me how somebody like her can be so popular...

She sold a blog/news website named after her for nearly a billion dollars.

She's largely unknown. A few million people knowing who you are doesn't make you notably popular.

I've never been able to figure out who Ariana Huffington is or why I should care what she thinks.

She was a popular newspaper pundit before she founded huffpo and newspapers died.

Yes, Arianna Huffington loves talk about sleeping. And other assorted nonsense. Anything to keep the rank and file dems from noticing that the liberal elites make 100X what the rank and file do. To these ends, the dems have stolen a page out of the GOP playbook. Run interference around defense and family values so you don't notice the CEO makes 100X what you do.

The article takes the publication of a book and tries to spin it into a trend. It's not. People who could make the time still brag about getting very little sleep because it makes them feel important.

If you're not sleep deprived you need to check your privilege.

One of the great bonuses of working from home. You will be surprised how easy it is to get your 8 hours if you don't commute.

The problem with working from home is that it's very easy to procrastinate or just jerk off with the gazillion of things that attract your attention.

You know, it's weird, but for me, not having the buzz of other people around me all the time makes it easy for me to concentrate.... as long as I stay off HN, Reddit, and Imgur.

Seriously, HN is a gigantic delicious timesink that has probably cost all of us collectively millions.

> Seriously, HN is a gigantic delicious timesink that has probably cost all of us collectively millions.

It's possible, but what you get back from HN is also enormous; from jobs to interactions with very smart people. I mean, Alan Kay was involved in discussions here, just yesterday!

In other words, an opportunity to understand why you procrastinate and build good working habits.

Happens quite easily at the office too, with all the table tennis, foosball, free food and drink and regular meetings.

Heck I'm doing it right now with just a web browser sat at my desk...

And how being in an office prevents that?

depends on commute - my 15 mins don't mean anything, and once i leave work, all mental processes related to work topics go into hibernation till next morning. not so easy when I was working from home

I live pretty close to where I work, probably 20 minutes on foot. This is great for many reasons, but I also work in a public place (a library) and might have personal reasons to go there on days I'm not working. I do not do this because I just can't bring myself to hang out where I work. It's not that my coworkers are not respectful it's just that I don't want to.

Working from home was like being at work all the time. It started to wear on me. Now that I'm more mature I might be able to handle it, but at the time I just couldn't sustain.

not having kids is a privilege i suppose.

Right. It can't possibly have anything to do with discipline.

Or being part of a culture where "sleep is for the weak".

Certainly folks at the bottom of the economic ladder are sleep deprived due to needing to work multiple jobs and take care of kids. But there are a lot of high-status communities that put a positive value on sleep deprivation. I hear from multiple sources that this is true in medicine. I know from experience that this is true at MIT.

Those cultures need to change. There is no good reason for an introductory computer architecture class to make its assignments due at 6am.

There is no good reason for an introductory computer architecture class to make its assignments due at 6am

"It needs to be turned in by the earliest time I might feel like starting work in the morning."

The assignments were auto-graded

When I was an undergraduate TA in Computational Physics, we had a deadline of Monday 8am, which arised from a technicality: At Monday 8am, a cron job would download the submissions from the designated mailbox, and print them, so that we could pick them up for grading when we came into the office that morning.

You're absolutely right though. It would be more sensible to have the cronjob run at Sunday 8pm instead, given that nobody is in the office until Monday morning anyway.

If you're sleep deprived you need to check the privileges around you. :)

It is sad that your have such low morality that you would steal merely because you have the opportunity to do so. That says a lot about you.

Fortunately, the world isn't full of people like you.

Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. Please don't do this again. It's bad that someone stole from you and I'm sorry that it happened. But your reaction here wasn't helpful.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11823933 and marked it off-topic.

It's just possible I was joking. Or, I don't know, maybe I like to advertise my future criminal exploits on a web site I post to using my real name.

Possible, but just to be safe I've looked up your personal information and called the police in your area. They should be contacting you soon and hermannj314 can rest easy.

Many thanks Harry. I hope they can help me on my quest to get a few new mattresses and a computer.

If there is something I deeply wish for, it is for the power to ignore sleep. Every minute slept is a great loss. A good night's sleep means you're not working hard enough.

"How Sleep Clears the Brain" (literally, actual "stuff" is removed)

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-sle...

A bad night's sleep means you will have to work harder for the same result the next day.

I would rather have sleep pods.

Things that instantly shut your body down as much as safely possible, make a backup of your memory, perform any necessary repairs (including anti-aging), inject you with highly efficient nutrients, and you're good to go for an entire week before needing sleep again.

> A good night's sleep means you're not working hard enough.

That seems that you buy into one belief system (work is sacred, achievement is the goal in life, etc...) and project that onto others.

"Every minute slept is a great loss"

I'm thinking you're being sarcastic, but if not, there's nothing you're doing that's going to be done more productively by being sleep-deprived.

No, I think he wasn't sarcastic at all. The fact is that we waste 1/3 of our life sleeping. Find a way to stay healthy and well rested without sleep and you basically added 25 years to human lifespan.

Are you sure?

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/insomnia-t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

Missing the point.

The power to ignore sleep would be pointless if it came with the downsides.

If I could lose the need to sleep, without any adverse health effects? Awesome. It's a shame that that's not currently possible.

This sounds like a nice idea, but can I also have a pony? http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/01/13/

Why stop there? You could teleport, postpone eating indefinitely, never have to expel wastes, never age, be invulnerable, and think faster!

> Why stop there? You could teleport, postpone eating indefinitely, never have to expel wastes, never age, be invulnerable, and think faster!

Sounds great, sign me up!

It'd be interesting if we genetically engineered or something, a way to sleep half our brain kind of like dolphins. 8 hours of half brainpower. Though honestly, if you are doing things that take a lot of thinking, your brain is often doing some work still while you sleep.

I know we're talking hypothetical science fiction here, but assuming each hemisphere requires eight hours of sleep, wouldn't that total 16 hours of half brainpower per day?

By the same logic, you should regret the time spent eating, but the food ingestion provides you with the fuel to actually get these brain cells to work. Sleep is similarly important: During sleep, mandatory maintenance is performed on the brain cells (both on the biochemical and on the informational level), as far as science knows (or conjectures).

Here, have this /s you dropped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com