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Comment by gogopuppygogo | Hacker News Reader

I started today with 4.5 hours of sleep and I’ll do just great with that. Once a week my body grabs 10-14 hours in a single night to “catch up”.

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The vast majority of people would be under performing without even noticing at 4.5 hrs. Yet somehow, everyone thinks they're part of the 1% that has some magic genetic fix for this. Sort of like how 80% of people think they're above average at driving.

The last sentence is brilliant! Sometimes, I feel I am the only person that I know who admits to being a terrible driver. I am so easily distracted by beautiful nature, construction sites, other car crashes, whatever... Thank goodness I never had an accident, but many close calls. As a result, I try to drive as little as possible.

Average is not the same as mode. 99.9% of people (at least) have more arms than the average for instance.

So yes, theoretically 80% may be better at driving than the average, it is just so that the other 20% are even worse at it.

Given the average driver, imagine how bad that other 20% must be.

Unless you're a genetic outlier it is likely that you're doing long-term damage to your health.

like?

High correlation between sleep deprivation and altzimers

I was under the impression that the idea that one can just oversleep to "catch up" was debunked already, e.g. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-c...

"Catching up" on sleep is a myth. If you're getting wildly different amounts of sleep night to night (even on a "schedule" like yours) it's a biological/physiological certainly that you're operating at a deficit. Maybe not cognitive, but there is a deficit there whether you realize it or not.

I am not sure about this, i had periods of 5h a sleep days for a week or two and then slept 12 hours for a day and felt very fresh and carried on with 5h a day. Sometimes it's 7-8 hours a day for couple weeks, sometimes it's 5. Feels about equal to me, maybe it has to do with volatile working hours for me, not sure. All I know the worst is hangover days and on holidays I stay in bed for 10hours only to feel unusually tired. Maybe environment is a bigger factor than genetics.

Why are you downvoting this? I also know people like this, however I personally need at least 7-8.

The last weeks I have practised to not focus too much on if Ive had a sleep deprived night and that helps and works for a few days.

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