I find the cognitive tests in the experiment to be insufficient, to make the argument that practical cognition did not suffer and that the experimenter was 'productive for 16 hours'. The experiment uses two computer games and a 3 hr test, not much of a comparison to all day non-stop creative software development. The SAT is one neat little question after another, every challenge carefully crafted and nicely wrapped. Time to completion is always relatively easy to calculate.

Creative coding requires a level of alertness that I find is most similar to a chess game. A working day is around 8 hours. A 3 hour assignment feels like a half-day.

I wonder how many hours the author could play chess against a good opponent, on 4 hours of sleep a night? I doubt it approaches '16 productive hours'...