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Comment by bobbiechen | Hacker News Reader

If you're interesting in learning more, Scott Alexander recently discussed research on this topic with a lot of links to papers: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d...

>But forget the practical side of this for now. It looks like sleep is somehow renewing these people's depressions. As if depression is caused by some injury during sleep, heals part of the way during an average day (or all the way during an extra-long day of sleep deprivation) and then the same injury gets re-inflicted during sleep the next night.

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With that phrasing, I can't but muse that it is not the sleep that causes issues, but the "starting fresh" in the morning.

Hypothesis being that something about a well rested mind lets a waking person check off more of a list of things to consider first thing in the morning.

I have depression/anxiety and procrastination issue in the morning. It gets better especially once I decided to do something for the day. Then it's all momentum all the way.

Making a timetable for the next day helps, I have found. The downside is that I tend to say no to anything that deviates from the timetable.

this is so relatable. it takes so much effort to commit to any sort of plan in the first place, and then life circumstances happen and the plan has to change, and I'm left completely defeated by that development. this sucks.

I had a similar issue, and I found a solution : Rather than aiming to follow my plan, I aim to do a predetermined amount of tasks (25 in my cases), regardless of whether or not they are in my schedule. I use an app to keep track of the amount of tasks done, and it has been surprisingly effective!

Which app? Definitely curious if it'll help with my own procrastination (and possibly undiagnosed depression).

The last time I made some headway on why I seem to endlessly procrastinate (said headway being enabled by, er, "self medication"), I came to the conclusion that it's because my brain sees a whole bunch of things to do, and instead of taking the rational approach of "well take things one at a time", it instead gets into a whirlwind of indecision, panics under the stress of all these things to do, and immediately starts reaching for an escape, thus compounding the problem. In the "self medicated" state my brain was more able to get into a groove of "okay, do $N more things" and actually make some headway, but only until the nausea caught up to me (at which point I had to force myself to call it a day).

My hope is that it's just a matter of tooling, and that a better toolset will help me get out of ruts without needing to rely on mind-altering substances.

I just downloaded one of the first apps that I found on the Google Play Store when I searched for "incrementor". I think any app where a number goes up when you press a button will do the trick.

My understanding is that procrastination most commonly stems from emotional disregulation. I’ve definitely experienced that myself.

I wish something like that would work for me. I would immediately begin to analyse what counts as a task. I'd set myself tasks, realise they're much more difficult than I thought they were and realise there's no way for me to complete this task and also hit my 25 goal.

Then I'd get frustrated with myself and probably go surf reddit for the rest of the day.

No system of any type has worked for me consistently.

I feel you on this. I have found that no system lasts for me. I have also found that any system can help to get me going. Such that now I try not to use anything to plan his things will end, but only how I will begin them.

Similar problems hit me with exercise. About the only system I have there is too obligate myself to finish something. For example, if I walk the dog a mile out, I have to walk the mile in, as well. Bike to work? I have to bike home now.

I also tend to overanalyze things, but books like "Atomic Habits" and "The Slight Edge" were really helpful. It made realize that there's no point to try to properly define what a task is, as what I can do at any given day depends on my physical and mental state.

How I perform when I have a bad day is completely different from my performance on a good day. Something that's a task today might not be considered like one tomorrow.

There'll be days where I'll only do 25 small things then call it a day, and that's okay.

> I wish something like that would work for me. I would immediately begin to analyse what counts as a task. I'd set myself tasks, realise they're much more difficult than I thought they were and realise there's no way for me to complete this task and also hit my 25 goal.

Can you permit yourself to subdivide those tasks that turn out to be more difficult?

Subdividing in total doesn't work for me. Unless it is something I already know how to do. Identifying the next thing works ok.

So, if something is taking longer because you're identifying previously unanticipated subtasks, does doing the yak-shaving count toward your count of tasks, or not?

Ha! Sadly, no. Fidling with the editor is never really the next thing. I have had brew mess up things before, such that fixing it is.

I used to have an hour or so a week where I would consider what I called process improvement. And if anything ever really slows me down, I do consider that a priority.

I meant more along the lines of tracking an issue through transitive dependencies, and then having to make a change at each step before the fix is apparent in the code you were actually writing.

I once found a weird import issue in a Google App Engine demo that, IIRC, traced back through to pip, virtualenv, and eventually setuptools.

Any sort of table, plan or a roadmap makes me more depressed, because I cannot stick to it and that amplifies feeling of guilt. Best results I had when my plan was to do just one thing, even if it was only one line of code throughout the day and even doing nothing at all I had coded as doing resting. I had incredible progress with this approach.

Is it possible for you to have something already planned the previous day?

That might play a role, but sleep deprivation is also a trigger for hypomanic or even manic episodes in bipolar patients. There's something about sleep deprivation that alters mood in certain mental disorders.

Based on my experience I figure the "reasoning" behind this mechanism is that if my anxiety is bad enough to be keeping me awake, I clearly need more energy to deal with my problems (and, graciously, it is provided).

Interesting, I've noticed for a while if I have a late night the next day I'll often be extremely energetic and more social than normal. The crash comes the day after.

I've had panic attacks during loosely-structured periods in my life where sitting in the shower after waking up in the morning and having to decide what to do with that day was absolutely overwhelming. Sometimes when you have a lot going on and you're under a lot of stress there's a lot of pressure associated with deciding how best to allocate your time.

In contrast, I find a relative peace at 3am, since it's merely a continuation of what I had been doing earlier that day. I'm in a groove, and there's no major decisions to make regarding my resource allocation.

Waking up is absolutely one of my least favorite parts of the day. It comes with a tremendous burden, especially when living alone and not having a fixed schedule or a boss.

I’m glad if you feel better know. It’s interesting to know oneself because I have exactly the opposite experience. The more the day pass the more I am stressed, with sometimes panic attacks before sleep. I feel refreshed in the morning, the best part of the day for me. The exception is when I have a fixed schedule, a boss (also a long commute and a job I don’t like), then sure I don’t like waking up, because I know exactly what the day will be without surprise and it’s shitty.

Out of curiosity, what is it that gets you before you go to sleep? What is running through your mind when you experience the panic attack? (I mean, not specifics, but in a general sense.)

I think it’s general anxiety from the accumulated “thinking fatigue” during the day. There is a correlation with periods where I lacked a clear plan and spent too much time of the day in my thought planning the future. The process at sleep then is something like I feel tense -> I become hypersensible -> I notice each heartbeat accelerating -> maybe something is wrong -> ... Sometimes it was more sudden like waking up panicked in the middle of the night. Meditation helped because now I notice when I loose myself too much in my thought. The effect is not immediate but it makes a difference at the end of the day.

I can't help thinking that Scott Alexander has no clue what he's talking about, or more more benevolently, is writing quasi-poetic nonsense. Which is bad for someone with that many followers.

I can give another off-the-cuff alternative: sleep deprivation reduces self-awareness, and thus self-report of depressed feelings. It might be that at this point the "brain" is more susceptible to treatment, but that's an entirely different matter.

He's a psychiatrist and generally researches everything he writes about quite thoroughly, so I'd be surprised if he had no clue what he's talking about in this case.

If you're going to say someone is talking nonsense, maybe back it up with specific reasons how and why. (Not necccesarily saying he isn't, just without specifics we might as well just be calling people names)

Good job

I dont know this guy. But his idea definitly works for me. The effect lasts longer than a day so i would argue its not the sleep deprevation itself

> I dont know this guy. But his idea definitly works for me. The effect lasts longer than a day so i would argue its not the sleep deprevation itself

It is generally accepted that the negative effects of sleep deprivation last longer than a day too. If you are sleep deprived you can't 'catch up' by sleeping in for a night or two (for example on the weekend).

fwiw I've used it on and off as a last resort and it saved my life.

The first few times I happened to do it was not because I was aware of the link (20 years ago nobody wrote about it). It was by accident because I've stayed up so late that dawn surprised me during a night of insomnia. So it made more sense to just power through the day with coffee rather than mess up my sleep pattern. It certainly works for me like some kind of reset.

Scott is a practicing psychiatrist (now with his own clinic!) and is very well-read on depression specifically

Scott's explanation at least makes sense with a causal chain of reasoning. "Self-awareness" is more a philosophical concept that has no psychiatric meaning, sort of like like "fairness" in economics. "It's all placebo here!" sounds lazy and like a cheap shot.

I knew a Psyc. nurse years ago, and she said they prevent certain depressed patients from sleeping. I knew her 17 years ago, and she was a nurse since the 80’s.

She said it was for the patients whom were brought in because they just tried to kill themself’s, or told admittance they wanted to die.

I had the idiotic idea I could cure my dysthymia (Minor depression) by sleep deprivation, and it didn’t work at all.

>I can't help thinking that Scott Alexander has no clue what he's talking about, or more more benevolently, is writing quasi-poetic nonsense. Which is bad for someone with that many followers.

Note how you haven't pointed to a single thing that's bad with his post, but nonetheless managed to sling several condescending accusations (has no clue, quasi-poetic, nonsense) at him...

And all that for a point where he doesn't even pretend to give any specific explanation or causual relationship or anything, just wants recap with a description of the outward appeareance of the phenomenon, precisely to show that we have no clue about it yet:

"It looks like sleep is somehow renewing these people's depressions. As if depression is caused by some injury during sleep, heals part of the way during an average day (or all the way during an extra-long day of sleep deprivation) and then the same injury gets re-inflicted during sleep the next night".

In TFA this is not an explanation of what happens, but an "it looks as if somehow" to highlight exactly the current lack of an explanation, an explicitly presented as such.

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