Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Something I've been wondering about - but have been unable to find any solid research on - is if it would be "optimal" to sleep immediately after any learning/training session, whether it be mental or physical, instead of just resting while still awake.

If sleep is the best state for the body to be in to consolidate memories, reduce fatigue, etc., then it would seem logical to try and be in the sleep state as much as possible.

Obviously the difficult part is actually being able to fall asleep on command without using some kind of pharmaceutical, but I do think falling asleep quickly is something that can be learned:

https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/want-to-fall-asleep-faste...

View on HN

Would love to see some research on it, but this reminds me of the structure of a traditional yoga asana practice and I've wondered the same thing about rest after a learning/training session. Typically at the end of a practice session of yoga asana (and sometimes in between postures) you'll take savasana and just rest in open awareness. A teacher of mine would always say this is the most important part of class, to let everything integrate in.

When I started training Muay Thai I found that I often would "lose" a lot of what we had worked on in class, and then started taking savasana right when I got home. In that not-quite-sleep state my brain would replay what we worked on.

Sometimes if I'm really bashing into a wall with some coding problem I'll just take savasana for 10-15 minutes and get back to it. I feel like it helps.

Funnily enough I wonder if a burst of adrenaline after learning is effective. Kind of tricking your brain into thinking it just survived a dangerous situation and must retain whatever lead up to it.

I was watching one of those performance science podcasts (Hubermann, I think) and I do believe he said that if you take a cold shower immediately after learning, it increases the likelihood that you'll remember it. So I wonder if the optimal learning pattern would be learn > cold shower > sleep.

Don't quote me though, as it's been awhile.

Perhaps learn > cold shower > sex > sleep, as to not just simulate surviving a dangerous situation, but also add enjoying the spoils of it.

Using our evolutionary predispositions for good rather than evil??

I always wondered in a half serious way if sex (just innuendo or tittilating images or something) could have positive effects on learning if done right for the same reasons: evolutionarily wanting to retain information if it has a better chance of leading to mating. Of course you'd only test this with adult students.

This was somewhat the thesis of my dissertation.

I suggested cognitive fatigue was an adaptive construct that biases people to go offline and replay their memories, and that this was decision-theory optimal from a learning / reward perspective.

https://mayank-agrawal.com/papers/AgrawalMattarCohenDaw21.pd...

When I feel fatigue coming on, I just lie on a sofa with some soundscape playing on my noise cancellation headphones.

I close my eyes and allow my mind to drift. Similar to the phase before falling asleep. Most of the time, this mind drifting is enough but sometimes I fall asleep - both states help.

The whole setup of the modern school day is dumb. It's too early for many growing minds. And it doesn't balance what's taught with a chance to reflect on it. And the school year should be the whole year with more breaks rather than a summer time off.

It would be pretty cool to have some sort of siesta for students in the day. Maybe one of those private schools would do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com