Ask HN: Sleep hacking?

4 points·hajrice··4 comments

Hi there HN! I recently read the 4 hour body, where it mentions ways to reduce your sleep to only 2 hours a day.

I'm interested in hearing your experiences with "sleep hacking", tips/tricks? have you had any success? Would you recommend it?

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Yes, I get by just fine on 2 hours of sleep a day. The only problem is those fucking giant pink squirrels that occasionally chase me around the house.

Joking aside, you can doubtless 'improve' your sleep, but I'm very skeptical of claims that you can radically reduce it without serious side effects. (Ok, yes, the squirrels made me type that)

haha, yeah, good one ;)

From what I've seen, it doesn't really work, though Dustin Curtis' article on sleep hacking is most definitely a good read: http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

My body quite likes biphasic rather than monophasic sleep patterns, and I spent around a year on this schedule. It worked well for me, but only because I wasn't forcing my body to do something it didn't want and I could fit it around my work. It can be hard to limit the length of your sleeping phases, and my tip here is to never go to sleep without something you need to do as soon as you wake up.

In general it's far more healthy to hack your schedule to fit your body clock than the other way round. Outsource your admin work so you don't need to be awake at specific times, schedule any remaining meetings to happen during your most awake hours.

I've had more success with staying awake longer, rather than sleeping less. The problem with sleeping less is that certain parts of sleep are about mental recovery/consolidation and physical recovery. If you miss these, your memory will suffer, and your muscles will ache.

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