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Comment by qntty | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain what sleep privation is? It's pretty hard to google.

A component of CBTi is sleep restriction, whereby you limit your hours in bed and wake at the same time every day. By both anchoring your circadian rhythm to that waking time and building sleep drive at night you can reduce sleep onset latency, and maintenance issues throughout the night.

If you spend 8h total, you can dial back to 7, or as low as 6, on a temporary basis. Once your sleep restructures itself (which doesn't actually take that long), you can increase your total time in bed back to 8.

Even sleep therapy apps are pretty useless as they just regurgitate what ought to be freely available information.

Do you nap in this phase, or just have a few days totally dead?

Onset insomnia is (or was) my main thing. I tried this and remember feeling totally dead. Couldn't get through it.

I might rest my eyes for a few minutes, but avoid napping.

Keeping a steady waking time is the main thing. Rather than limiting myself to 6 or 7 hours I'll stay up reading to a low warm light until sufficient sleep pressure has built up (easy enough to identify). A preceding relaxation routine helps, and time away from electronics. I do a quick yoga stretching thing. If it so happens I hit the sack and can't fall asleep, I'll sit up for a couple of minutes, then try again.

have any resources on privation in particular?

Note that this doesn't actually work in all situations. I have a non-24 hour circadian rhythm and severe insomnia and for a long time I could only sleep on the shifting schedule, even with very little sleep for as long as I could manage (a couple of weeks or so). After a while figuring out which of various medications and practices seem to help (although my overall health is still not improving so it might just be an unknown health issue improving my sleep) I've been able to at least stop shifting around the clock, can usually get to sleep in an hour or so going to bed at about the same time as the day before, and now getting less sleep does seem to have some impact on my ability to get to sleep the next night. Not everyone with circadian issues has this and possibly people without might. That being said, it is a good technique when it works. Waking up at the same time every day seems to be more important than going to sleep at the same time and is both an indication of how well your sleep is doing and can be helpful in improving sleep.

I’m guessing he means sleep compression where you commit to a waking time, and start by sleeping just 6 hours or so, then slowly build up. The goal is to maximize sleep efficiency and minimize time spent in bed awake. Really makes you associate bed with sleep, and makes your sleep very efficient

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