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Comment by nopassrecover | Hacker News Reader

I agree for the most part. However, try going for a regular run (say 5km) once per week, same day, and track your times. Let's say you hit about 30 minutes first time, and get it down to around 20 mins over a couple of weeks. Now try greater sleep deprivation than normal one week and watch your time plummet.

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I find the same sort of result with coding on little sleep. While it feels like I'm "high functioning" while coding at 4:00AM, a code review in the light of day after a good night's sleep often reveals that I wasn't.

I've begun to suspect this is because we don't notice all the little issues we'd notice if we were more awake - at 4AM, the code is Flying, because I'm not stopping to realize how crappy the code is.

I've had similar experiences. If I am very tired I don't get "coder's block", but the code is often rubbish.

It's well known that sleep is an absolute requirement for athletes. If you don't get an optimal amount, performance will suffer: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa062800a....

If it affects peak physical performance, it seems reasonable to suspect it affects peak mental performance (as studies seem to suggest). High functioning executives might get by on little sleep, but would they perform better on more sleep? Are hours clocked more important than output at the executive level?

No, it doesn't seem reasonable at all.

Athletic activity causes actual physical microdamage that takes rest time, nutrition, and hormones to repair. The elevated secretion of human growth hormone during REM sleep is a significant reason why athletes perform better on more sleep.

No such analogue exists for the human brain. Mental activities, at worst, deplete neurotransmitter levels. I have seen no evidence to suggest that massive dosages of sleep do a better job of restoring these levels than minimally adequate amounts.

For mental work, sleep is not replenishment, it's prep work. Your brain is thinking problems while you sleep.

Not only that, sleep also appears to be when your brain reinforces what you've learned... over and over again.

I thought it was well known that sleep plays a very important role in learning?

Yet people perform worse mentally without sleep - why would that be if sleep was not vital to mental performance? Have you never needed a nap or coffee to refresh your mind? Do you deny a physical influence on mental faculties?

Training involves neural adaptation, a large part of which occurs while sleeping.

The systems of the body are not neatly partitioned into modules.

Considering I used to run Xcountry and have been known to go out for 8+ mile runs in the middle of the night, I'd say for the most part my sleeping habits do not impact how I feel while running. In fact, I'd actually say more exercise is more important than more sleep as I feel much better in general when I am exercising/running regularly, regardless of my sleeping habits.

I will absolutely concede that there is a threshold where sleep deprivation will negatively impact my (or anyone's) ability to perform, its just a question of what that threshold actually is.

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