Comment by rufugee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rufugee | Hacker News Reader

Profession: CIO - Full time at company of roughly 3400 employees

  - [6:45 AM] - Wake up, take out dog
  - [7:45 AM] - Place kids in the car, off to car pool
  - [8:25 AM] - Arrive at work
  - [8:30 - 9:30 AM] - Catch up on email and news
  - [9:30 - 11:45 AM] - Work on whatever 
  - [11:45 - 12:45 PM] - Head to gym and get workout in
  - [12:45 PM - 5:45 PM] - Work on whatever
  - [5:45 PM - 7:45 PM] - Head home, spend time with family
  - [7:45 PM - 11:30 PM] - Work on either full time or personal projects on laptop while on the couch with the wife
  - [11:30 PM - 1:30 AM] - Work on personal projects
  - [1:30 AM] - Bed

Working on whatever during the day can include: attending meetings, checking in with the team, helping out on servers, writing code, architecting solutions, <insert whatever here>. Because I still write code and devops/admin, etc, I wouldn't consider myself a typical CIO...and I very much prefer it that way. I know and understand our entire stack, and I find this simple fact crucial to effectively driving innovation.

I couldn't operate at a high level with that amount of sleep. You must be one of those rare people who don't need 7+ hours of sleep to function.

I generally don't. I'm lucky to get seven hours of sleep...most of the time it's six or less. If I only get 4-ish, I can feel it, but anything over 5 leaves me feeling normal...or what is normal to me.

Wow, less than 6 hours of sleep. Is that sustainable?

I'm in my mid-forties now, and I've been doing it since my mid-twenties, so it is for awhile. I doubt I'll still be doing it in my mid-fifties ;-)

It depends on your genome

It does, but at least for me, the ritual requires a bit more work than that. My whole family is good with less than 8 hours of sleep and interestingly, growing up it was seen as a symptom of a problem if we slept for 8 or more hours. I am usually good with 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night, but in order to maintain that, I must ensure that I don't oversleep on the weekends, or my whatever thing gets out of whack and my body wants to oversleep on other days. I've also got to maintain my exercise regime, because for some reason, when I work out, I feel good and totally refreshed after 5-6 hours of sleep. But if I haven't worked out for a few days, or I overslept on the weekend, it takes me a week and some exercise to get back into feeling refreshed after only 5-6 hours of sleep.

No.

Source: I sleep less than 6 hours most nights.

5 or 6er here. Sleeping 12-14 on the weekends helps.

Parent with two young kids here.

I find it's quality over quantity. A sound 4-5 hours is far preferable to a broken 7-8 hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com