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Comment by benhamner | Hacker News Reader

A different way to frame the question: "what keeps you up at night?" (beyond the very uncommon event of HN being down)

Massive quantity of emails? YC startups that aren't the rare runaway success? YC startups that are the rare runaway success? Meta issues around YC? Something unrelated to YC? Pressure to live up to the pg legend irl? Not being disciplined about avoiding overworking? Something in your private life that's not appropriate to share? Anything?

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Sick children.

People maltreating startups we've funded.

Any sort of deal involving third parties that might let us down. E.g. fundraising, when we were a fund.

After Elon Musk mentioned his sleeping patterns on a couple of recent interviews (answer: 6 hours a night), I've been curious to learn about the sleeping patterns, diets and work habits of exceptionally productive people.

I wish biographies on the world's most influential people discussed this (or at least I would like to read scientific studies on this)... Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are famously fond of burgers so I'd expect unfortunately diet habits have more to do with where you live than what you accomplish :(

When I was at college I read that Margaret Thatcher slept just 4 hours per night, and I was so envious, wishing I had that extra time every day. Three years ago my wife and I had twin girls and that meant very little sleep at night for me (night shifts were my responsibility as my wife still kept her paid job). In the last year the kids sleep fine, which means I get to sleep better, but strangely I still wake up after four hours without any need to. A few months ago I learned that Thatcher had twins as well :-)

The cynic might say having only four hours of sleep didn't do her any favors, based on some the decisions she made in her time as PM.

Bill Gates recently said he reads before bed and sleeps at least 7 hours a night. He said if he doesn't get at least that much his "IQ begins to drop". [CBS Interview]

Well, pg actually said he went to sleep while it was down, so that didn't keep him up.

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