Left brain hemisphere more awake the first night sleeping in a new place (2016)
npr.org
npr.org
When I park my semi truck in a truck parking lot in late afternoon or evening, if the space on either side is empty I leave my parking lights on, until both spaces are filled.
And if I'm unlucky enough to park on the end of the row, I leave my parking lights on all night long. And go to sleep with half my brain awake.
Oh, here. I sent one of those to my boss, and it got forwarded and shared internally, and with my permission the company put it up on their Facebook page.
I'm not on Facebook. If it's still up, I imagine you can find it by searching "Swift Transportation" and "Aaron".
As for burnout ... You'll probably miss the money. I'm making half what I was, and I was nowhere near SV salary expectation.
EDIT: I don't speak for ... disavow all knowledge ... etc etc
There are plenty of companies out there which hire folks without putting them through the leetcode hazing ritual.
Cheers
I'm trying. So far my biggest problem has been not getting interviews because recruiters pretty much slam the phone down the nanosecond they ask me how many years professional experience I have so far and I answer honestly.
I'm trying to get some projects into a usable state so I have a few things to point to and say "well I created this and this", but I'm... I'm not fast at this, at all.
Currently stuck on trying to pass an array of floats from C++ back to C# and getting a bunch of random values and NaNs
So it's better to sleep with two partners at a time? I've always maintained this to my spouse!
>When I park my semi truck in a truck parking lot in late afternoon or evening, if the space on either side is empty I leave my parking lights on, until both spaces are filled.
So, how do you deal with one driving off early while you're sleeping? Or does that not traditionally happen?
I’ve often thought that this was probably something left from when we were living in caves or hiding from predators were you need to be sure that a new sleeping place is safe.
More likely the worry is other humans. We are territorial. Sleeping indicates a confidence in one's safety in a location. It can be a sign of dominance. Watch any cat sleeping in a dog's bed just to show who is in charge. I suggest that when in a new place we worried more about the locals not wanting us in their territory than the lions wanting to eat us.
It definitely made me ponder about Dunbar's number and what tribal life must be like.
Coincidentally, the three demarcations at this particular burn, the theme camp (~30 people), the field/block (~100), and the whole burn (~500), correspond to the lower end of the types of groupings Dunbar observed.
> Dunbar noted that the groups fell into three categories—small, medium and large, equivalent to bands, cultural lineage groups and tribes—with respective size ranges of 30–50, 100–200 and 500–2500 members each.
I’d second the other comments and suggest you research SIBO, gluten intolerance, and fringe diets such as paleo; and do an elimination diet.
but it sounds like you are also eating something your body doesn't like. for example, before i discovered i was allergic to gluten, i would also poop dozens of small sessions per day. all that went away after doing an elimination diet (systematically introducing 1 new ingredient at a time until you find the problems).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_allergy_test
A quick search shows that it works for gluten intolerance/celiac disease too.
My mom went through this back in the 80s or so after having mysterious issues - turned out it was raw(ish) onion that was the culprit.
Some of the customers I used to work with had me visit them multiple times. After I had gotten used to a particular hotel (typically the second visit) I slept much better. Over multiple visits comes a basic level of familiarity with restaurants, roads, shops, etc and my level of stress dropped as well.
We don't know why this is the case, but one theory is related to the story of the ducks in the article. In our past we used to sleep in groups and so at every point in time, at least one group member was alert to watch out for predators.
This is also the reason behind evolutionary pressure to have a certain percentage of night owls among the tribe who naturally sleep late and act as eyes and ears against predators.
My whole brain is awake the first night in a new place. I just can't sleep.
Me too, it usually takes me 3 nights to really feel like I'm able to sleep.
The first 2 nights I'm pretty much consciously awake the whole time. By the 3rd night I usually have spurts of dreams I can remember and generally feel more rested the day after.
I don't have any issues sleeping at home tho. I tend to goto bed when I feel tired, fall asleep easily and haven't woken up to an alarm clock in 15 years other than a few times where I set it because I had to be up much earlier than usual for very important things.
I believe that this is your experience, but I wonder it's actually true or there are short sleeping periods (microsleeps or perhaps longer) that you don't notice or remember. I've heard from some people for example that they literally didn't sleep for a week at some point, but this is very dubious regarding health effects.
For me, if I actually skip 2 nights sleep (e.g. travelling) I'm barely able to speak in coherent sentences or make decisions, my vision blurs, I feel derealization etc.
Then do an all-day on-site technical job interview.
Human bodies react very differently too.
I remember doing a tech related trip once where it was crazy schedules (up at ~6-7am and back in the hotel room at 9:30pm-10pm) for 3 nights and then waking up at 4:45am on the last day to catch a 6+ hour flight home (10 hours with lay overs) and arriving at home. That was with very limited travel experience and having to be video recorded / mic'd up for 6-8 hours a day to interact with multiple tech presentations. Basically very stressful for someone who never did any of that before and is generally not that outgoing.
I never really felt too tired in the moment and I know for sure I didn't sleep the first 2 nights and did get a few solid hours of real sleep on the 3rd night. Honestly I was pretty surprised at how well things turned out. I used to pull a lot of all nighters as a teenager playing video games. Usually by ~36 hours I felt some side effects like brain fog and being ridiculously tired but by the end of that stretch it was a way different (and worse) experience than that travel experience, or laying in bed for ~6-8 hours with my eyes closed at night but not sleeping for a few nights.
I remain highly skeptical that this is actually true, it would have to be measured. I don't doubt that it feels so and that you are honest, but I wouldn't even trust myself to accurately describe what really happens over several hours with eyes closed. I assume some sleep can go unnoticed.
There are also people who honestly insist they don't ever snack and eat healthy and magically get fat. Anecdotal self reports are very unreliable, similar to eye witness testimony. But people are really upset to hear this.
I wonder if this is part of the reason - familiar surroundings
Hah.
Or (more practical) what if you sleep in a hotel room for a week, then move to a hotel room in a different country which looks exactly like the old hotel room?
I can confirm, from personal experience at least, that it makes little difference - the first night is always difficult in terms of getting a good night's sleep.
Does this work for us too? I'm gonna try to sleep on the right side of my SO when traveling.
Seriously though, the point would be to have people on either side, not the side of the brain you want to put to sleep..
waifu pillows on both sides perhaps?
"Sleep researchers discovered the "first-night effect" decades ago, when they began studying people in sleep labs. The first night in a lab, a person's sleep is usually so bad that researchers simply toss out any data they collect."
If your condition is more subtle (e.g. sleepwalking) they will already book you for two nights.
In addition, there is a counter-effect where people are struggling for years with their condition and being in a sleep lab brings some form of 'being taken serious'.