Startup Founders Don't Sleep (How many all-nighters do you pull a month?)

Loss of sleep is cumulative. After 3 days, you might think you're getting by fine on 4 hours of sleep per night, but it's catching up to you. You start saying things that don't make sense, or pausing inexplicably during conversations. You start zoning out when reading, and make decisions based on habit rather than logic. Small inconveniences start making you angry, and complex problems are baffling. Organization becomes impossible. Your muscles are weak and uncoordinated, you bump into things like you're drunk. You'll begin to stop caring, you'll stop enjoying things. Over time, it just gets worse and worse, until you actually start hallucinating.

Adrenaline can get you through some difficult situations, but in the long run health problems will catch up to you.

I often spend 12-16 hours a day writing code (or, depending on where I'm at, putting pen to paper while I convince myself that the way I've found for solving a particular problem will work), but I don't rob myself of my 8 hours of sleep.

I've found from experience -- both while writing code and during my doctorate -- that the quality of work I produce when I'm sleep-deprived drops dramatically. If I'm lucky, I look at my work the next morning, decide that it's garbage, and throw it out; if I'm unlucky, I end up throwing out said sleep-deprived work a few days later, after spending many hours tracking down heisenbugs.

YMMV, of course -- some code is sufficiently straightforward that you can write it in your sleep, or (even better) has sufficiently explosive failure modes that you can test it in the morning and (assuming it doesn't explode) know that despite your lack of sleep, the code is good. And, of course, just as some people can code perfectly well while drunk or high on drugs, some people are entirely unaffected by not getting enough sleep.

But as for me and the code I write? I'll stay away from the drugs and make sure I get enough sleep, thanks.

"I'm a startup Founder, and I don't sleep, I build. If I stop now, there will be someone else to replace me -- maybe you."

He forgot to add, "But if I destroy your productivity by convincing you to go sleep-deprived, then I'll be safe."

This is romantic exaggeration. I would never advise founders to sleep less than they need, except in brief emergencies. Sleeping 8 hours a day leaves you 16 to work, and that should be more than enough.

Ahh, entrepreneur grandstanding.

Would that article make any more sense if it was about olympic athletes?

"I don't sleep, I train. How can I go to sleep when there's so much training to do? While my competitors are asleep and resting, I'm getting in an extra lap around the track. I'll sleep after I get a gold medal."

I can't count the number of times I stayed up late chasing a bug, only to have it be something so simple that I would've caught it in 20 minutes or less if I'd just gotten a normal amount of sleep and looked at it the next morning.

You just get slower and slower as you stay up, until you're sitting there staring at the screen for 5 minutes before you remember what you're doing.

Any lack of sleep at all will also cost you in productivity the next day. By having discipline to let it be, you can spend 20 minutes on it the next day instead of hours on it tonight and messing up your productivity all day tomorrow.

Quality, not quantity.

The hard part is realizing that quality is dropping as quantity increases. It may even be a small drop in quality, but if you add all of those drops up over time, it makes a big difference.

None. Don't be ridiculous, sleep is pretty important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep

I was writing about sleep as a metaphor for motivation and commitment. I should have been more literal.

Thanks for informing me that sleep is important.

Sleep deprivation is terrible for productivity. Staying awake for 20hrs without sleep puts you in a mental state comparable to being over intoxicated over the legal limit.

If you want to stay awake for longer periods and retain mental acuteness, sleep polyphasically.

If you manage your time and life right, you shouldn't have to be sleep-deprived. Of course, that means you have to schedule your priorities, and some things won't make it as part of your life. I've gotten my Bachelor's and Master's, and I never had to pull an all-nighter beyond my first semester. I don't anticipate any all-nighters in the PhD program either.

One of the founders of the consulting firm that I worked for talked about never working past 6 or 7 PM. He never ate out, and spent that time working. You can always work more in your day without sacrificing your sleep and/or health.

At the same time, if we could all survive on less sleep, it'd be nice.

How many all-nighters do you pull a month?

I actually get a little excited when I know I will have a night that I stay up late and get a ton done.

keeping yourself sleep deprived is a false economy. you need sleep in order to function at your maximum level of productivity. it's better to function at 100% productivity 66% of the time than it is to function at 50% for 100% of the time.

exception to this is when you have a specific deadline that needs meeting and only way to get there is working through the night.

Even beyond lack of sleep, which I think we all agree is bad in the literal sense, the law of diminishing returns sets in at some point and makes working further counter productive. The exact amount, of course, depends on who you are and what exactly you're doing, but it's probably much far lower than most people would guess.

I've done a lot of research on this, through both reading and self-experimentation, and have come to the conclusion that there aren't very many people who would benefit from hacking more than 60 hours a week in short bursts, or more than 50 sustainably. I'd take a hacker who works hard 5 days a week, 10 hours a day, and spends the rest of his time partying over one who sits in front of a computer 12 hours a day, 7 days a week any time.

There's a wealth of information on the topic out there, and studies are published all of the time. It's definitely the sort of thing one should look into when trying to increase their efficiency.

i really liked the article, it sets a good tone for the idea that the more you can push yourself the farther down field you get. I remember a quote from somewhere, I think it was in the Godfather, "you have to be willing to do what the others wont."

and that is what I got from the article

If he was really that stingy and focused with his time he wouldn't have even wasted any to write that post. Anyone who has done non-trivial development knows that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Sleep is essential.

This might work. Over the course of high school, I had to stay up to do a lot of easy, but time-intensive work. This is, of course, diametrically different from coding.

A lot fewer than I pulled while in college.

Even 16 hours a day will burn you out after a while. I try to work 70 to 80 hours a week.

An off-label prescription for Modafinil will let you skip as much sleep as you want and remain productive. You just have to start worrying about the cumulative health effects of minimal sleep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

i make important thoughts and take decisions during sleep if that counts! So, my 5-6 hour sleep doesn't get in my way

zero. my brain shuts down after 11 pm. (unless I am anxious about something - not programming related).

zzz. Oops i missed that, I was sleeping