Slashdot Mirror
How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?
not_you asks:
"Clinton, Giuliani, Bloomberg, and even Martha Stewart are rumored
to only get only 4 hours of sleep on a normal night. Being a student
without enough time for all the socializing (and studying) I'd like
to do and lacking the ability to dream lucidly, I'd like to get the
minimal amount of sleep necessary to function effectively. However,
I tend to make up for anything less than about 7 hours by dozing off
in class! Aside from taking espressos intravenously, how I can
function effectively with less sleep?" There are several factors
that affect how much sleep one can away with on a given day. Diet,
activity level, and other factors all will affect how long and how
well one rests. I've always heard that "nothing beats a full night
of rest" and to me, that always means close to 8 hours of sleep. Of
course, like most things Your Mileage May Vary, still, it would be
interesting to know how much sleep some of you can get by on, and
what conditions you have to maintain to keep it up. Comments?
I find that I can generally get by with 3-4 hours of sleep if I don't eat until much later the following day (between lunch and dinner), if I eat breakfast, I'm out like a light.
Moderate exercise just before you put the lights out for your 4 hour night seems to help more than exercising in the morning. Especially if you are a jogger.
Eventually, your body gets accustomed to little sleep and adjusts the length of REM sleep accordingly, so long as you stick to a routine sleep schedule (that's where most people go wrong); it's when you awake in the middle of REM sleep that you're worthless for the rest of the day.
Also, pouring McDonalds coffee down your pants on the way to work/school/sleep clinic will surely get the blood flowing. YMMV
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Anything less and I'll get increasingly tired until I need to sleep 12+ hours to compensate. ;)
Off course I can't really get more than 6-7 hours during the week so I'm always late for work (I don't hear my alarm clocks when too tired) and I'm not able to do much work until I've had a massive dose of caffeine (and even then
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Its sad, but I only sleep around 4 hours a night. I have a nasty insomnia problem where I simply have no desire to crawl into bed. I dunno...i am a freak perhaps. But I find that if I don't eat breakfast I will have _no_ energy for the rest of the day. Also investing some money into mt. dew and/or (insert favorite redbull-like drink) tends to make dealing with idiots early in the morning bareable. Other than that, I just am busy stimulating my mind in one way or another and I find it _very_ difficult to stop thinking and so i just lay in bed thinking the night away (mind you just 4 hours) and it takes me a good 2 hours in the morning to fully become alive. Then the rest of the day i am just peachy. Anyhow. Its 3am...i need to get my 4 hours in before work and then class.
This gives me 5 hours sleep and a lot of exercise on the dance floor
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
I just saw myself in the mirror in the lift (elevator) on the way into work this morning. All I can say is that however much sleep I need, I'm not getting enough :-(
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Sleep is very very very important. I learned that once during the final finals of my college career. I stayed up for over 112 hours (roughly 4.5 days) straight though a mixture of pluck, fear, and caffiene pills. By the end of this ordeal, I was literally barking mad.
I was seeing things that weren't there (like a staircase in my one-story flat, and various war heros standing over my shoulder giving me answers on the history test) and holding conversations with people which turned out to be completely unintelligible to both parties (with such zingers like: "Seven beer-teen and without even? You must be over. Totally joking over my and.").
Get your sleep. It's good for you.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
However, even with exercise I need a lot of sleep. I think it's just genetics. I've found that I really need 9 hours rather than the canonical 8. Guess I'll never be prez...and never have my own how-to-make-a-quilt-from-fallen-leaves show.
When you're asleep, the brain's level of consciousness (it's not that, but we'll call it that), swings up and down like a cross between a sine wave and a seismograph, something like so:
;>
When you first fall asleep, the brain goes into deep deep REM sleep, and you have your first dream. The brain's levels then swing back up towards non-REM sleep, but not necessarily leaving it, and then dip back down deeper into REM - but not as deep as the first time.
The brain undergoes several such swings, each time rising higher out of REM sleep (you're pretty much guaranteed to leave REM sleep the second time at least), and then not sinking as low. Eventually, it gets to the point where you're not even going into REM sleep, at which point you wake up.
Now, the trick is that if you wake up while in REM sleep, the body gets all mussed up. You feel like crap all day, you're tired, cranky, and whatnot. Effects may vary, but generally, this is the case.
If you wake up OUT of REM sleep, however, you will feel rested - perhaps not totally so, but you will be rested to some degree, and recharged.
The trick then is to catch yourself outside of these cycles. Ideally, you need to find a good time to go to sleep (for me, it's between 10 and 10:30 PM), and then see when you wake up. A few years ago, I found myself conscious enough to look at my clock and check the time every 2 hours - I would go to bed at 10-10:30, fall asleep at 11, and then wake up at 1, 3, 5, and 7 AM. At any of those times, I could have, if I'd wanted to, gotten up, gone to the bathroom, went online, gone to the store, or anything else - I was perfectly capable of doing whatever I wanted to do. My cycle is 2 hours then, and thus, I need sleep in 2-hour increments. I recall one time falling asleep at 2 AM, and waking up at 6 AM, and getting right back up and doing what I was doing before.
It has to be good sleep though - comfortable temperature, not sick, comfortable bed - and it has to be reliable (staying up until 1:30 AM screws me up big time for days to come), and you can't be malnourished - there are a few great ways to eat well, but that's a whole other Ask Slashdot.
Anyway, I suggest you experiment. Find a good time to sleep, and then see when you can wake up. Perhaps you'll need to get to sleep at 10 PM like I did, but perhaps you can wake up at 2 AM and study, prepare, mail letters, or code for the rest of the day afterwards.
Also, don't discount siestas. Lying down for half an hour in the middle of the day, even if you don't sleep, can be a great recharger. And don't touch sleeping pills, or anything, organic or not, to help you sleep better. The last thing you need is to get dependant on something for sleep, and then have it run out the night before your final.
--Dan
In case you haven't noticed all of the people mentioned in the story are at least 50ish. As people age they generally require less sleep. Sound like a good reason?
Good advice, but a bit of clarification if you please. Are you saying that I should wake up before or after I fall off of the cliff? Since I dont have a REM monitor, a distinct point in dream time would be helpful.
In college I held this 2 day schedule during the week
1-school+homework/etc as needed
2-play comp games all night (starcraft/quake/etc)
3-school next day+homework/etc as needed
4-sleep 12 hours
5-repeat
I held that for the m,t,w,th,f days.. heh, worked for me, it hurts your eyes being up in 36 hour shifts though.
I can get away with 3-4 hours sleep for maybe 2-3 weeks (not counting weekends) without being worn out. The trick is to not deprive yourself of sleep for too long, your body will tell you when enough is enough.
I find it a bit funny sometimes, yet scary, that when I sleep for just a few hours and try to sleep more when I wake up after that, I find myself in a dreamlike state where there's a great big international plot against me (I had one just this morning).
9 hours, on a good night.
I go to bed aroun 9, and am up at 5:30.
But, I'm fixing to get an afterschool Job, so it will be seriously cut back.
I'll not be getting to bed till 11ish, so I won't get up till 6ish.
Which gives me 7 hours of sleep, which is still plenty.
Last month when I was taking driving school, and not getting home at night till 11, I started seeing strange shaped out of the corners of my eyes, and wierd gray bubbles floating in the air.
But, I was still getting up early then, so I will be getting more sleep than that.
Develop a theory of how you could create a tablet that one could take each day that would replace the need for sleep. Imagine, you could have 8 extra hours to yourself every day! Provided they didn't cost too much everyone would buy them.
I find that sleeping for 10 hours and then staying awake for 20 hours works best for me. The problem is trying to get everyone else to work around my schedule! I've read that without light cues, people's circadian rhythms change by varying degrees. From the link above:
Kind of makes you wonder if our planet has always been spinning this fast, doesn't it?
-RayAs someone at college currently, I have quite varied sleep patterns. On a "normal" night, I aim for 8 hours sleep, and normally manage 7-7.5 hours, and with a few coffees during the day I'm fine. If I get any less I tend to fall asleep in lectures. That said, if I don't set my alarm, I'll normally sleep for 10 hours, after a night of heavy partying it can be more (but I suspect the alcohol plays an effect there...).
Being the mad fool that I am, I also row from time to time, which involves getting up at 5:30am instead of my usual 8:15. On a day when I'm rowing, I normally get 5 hours sleep before the outing (i.e. the night before), go to only one or two of my usual three lectures, then go back to bed for an hour and a half. Follow that with a decent lunch, and I'm fine for the rest of the day.
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
I had a job for a while where I had to wake up very early, like 5am earky. Now I'm conditioned to automatically wake up at 5am. I could go to bed at 2am, and wake up three hours later w/o a problem. Only every once in a while will I sleep past 5am until like 7 or 8am; and thats really rare. Only happens when I exhausted for whatever reason.
-- Eric
In case you're not getting enough sleep, maybe you should get a Visor to help you make up for it by Power Napping. These people have released a springboard module for the Visor that aids in taking a powernap. It works by monitoring your sleep patterns and waking you up before you enter deep sleep so you feel refreshed after a nap and not groggy. The only thing I'm not sure about is keeping your finger on the sensor while you're asleep.
How much sleep do i need?? More than I'm currently getting! :)
I've worked first, second, and third shift, and can honestly say that sleep is my least favorite activity. I feel as I'm being robbed of part of my life.
However, once im nice and asleep, it typically takes me 10-11 hours to wake back up naturally. If i have to wake up before that (Read: Work), it takes an act of G-d to get me up and out of bed. My body (and simiconcious mind) hate waking up so much that i can turn off an alarm (even my winamp alarm) without ever becoming completely lucid. I do it every night. I have to set 3 alarms to wake up. They recently all became ineffective. (Sometimes, i'll get up, turn the alarm off BEFORE it goes off!). Now I have a flesh-and-blood alarm that makes sure im awake in time to come to work.
Once i'm awake, and have had a good 8 hours, im fine after 30 minutes, but my brain doesnt enter init 3 until about 2 hours later.
I want to beg my doctor to prescribe me modafinil, the drug they use to treat narcolepsy. A recent study by doctors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston showed the drug is effective in letting healthy people stay awake and completely in control of their mental facilities for up to 4 days at a time. This raises an interesting question, at least for me.. my personality changes dramatically from the morning to the night.. wonder what would happen after 4 days.
You need sleep - don't discount it! Like other posters, you can survive for a day or two on little sleep, but it will catch up with you. I remember on several occasions having partied hard the night before and only grabbing 3-4 hours sleep... the morning would be terrible. Coffee would get me through but I wouldn't be thinking properly. The afternoon would be like a marathon - my head would go down and I would doze off at the keyboard... after a minute or two I would wake up to see my emacs screen full of garbage! (My fingers would also be sleeping on the keys!)
Steve Fossett who hot-air ballooned his way around the world said that he took power-naps. 15-30 min naps every few hours. Worked for him, but I imagine sheer adrenalin carried him through most of the time. For you and me we can try caffeine pills, jolt cola, or good old vodka red bull.
Thank you and goodnight
Normally, I need 8-9 hours sleep a night. I rarely get it, which sucks. But a unique sleep pattern, and one that can be maintained, is the watch system used when long distance sailing. Basically, it's equal, alternating periods of wake and sleep. The periods might be 2 or four hours (not usually more). It's hard to get used to but then surprisingly effective. You become able to sleep very quickly and wake completely refreshed. However, you then start to become tired again very fast, and are soon ready to sleep again 2 or 4 hours later.
As someone who can't well tolerate even a single 5 hour night and be functional the next day, I'm amazed that I can quite happily slip into the watch system. Odd.
-----
If I sleep in purposely (close my eyes and go back to sleep) I wake up with a headache. If I naturally sleep in (like this morning, I just didn't wake up till 6:05 am) then I'm fine.
I think you're more or less wired to require a certain amount of sleep. I used to need more sleep than I do now, but I've always been a pretty short sleeper. I've also gone through periods where I just couldn't sleep and resorted to pills (this coming from a guy who doesn't even own aspirin).
I know that up to a point if I exercise more than I am less sleepy, but if I exercise excessively then I end up feeling worn down.
If you try to fool your body it catches up for you, and often you put in negative time. I know that I've been amazed at some of the stuff I've written after 3-4 days of solid up time (no caffeine). After a certain point things are apt to just be done fundamentally wrong. I know there's a point where I start having problems with simple mental arithmetic because my memory can't handle keeping track of things like "carrying the ones". There's another point beyond that where I won't remember what I've done during this state. That seems to be when my work is most error prone. If I go beyond that point then I start to hallucinate.
In engineering classes I had many classmates who resorted to a cocktail of caffeine and other products to keep them awake. All they seemed to be able to do was regurgitate for finals (which unfortunately was usually good enough) without any real comprehension.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I have a very fast metabolism, and consequently need a lot of sleep. In fact I held a record at college for not getting out of bed for three days - spending the entire time asleep. God was I dehydrated though!
One thing I have found is that a high protein diet (loads of fish, chicken, etc) and daily exercise makes me sleep less rather than more. It certainly seems to make me concentrate better and not alternate between massive bursts of energy and normality.
It's just strange that I wasn't hyperactive as a child, only as an adult.
Well, personally I can function on anywhere from 1.5 to 4 hours of sleep, depending on the previous day.
Key things are: stay active, both in mind and body, if possible try to be in a cool temperature.. and if all else fails, it's time for a small snack.
This is true. The symptoms are similar to dehydration. Granted it is estimated to happen after over +150hrs awake and somebody would have to sit there shocking you to keep you awake, but it is a possibility.
Another thought, try light therapy while sleeping. I've heard good things about its ability to make one feel more energized. Plus it is shown to be effective therapy for seasonal depression (which has been confirmed to be a honest to goodness mental disorder).
Here's a quote from the Marvin Minsky article referenced in the Slashdot article _It's 2001, Where is HAL?
Recent discoveries in learning skills has revealed a very strange fact - suppose you work very hard on something and then you're tested later that day on the same thing. It's interesting, you won't be much better. If you're tested the next day, you may be a lot better. If you're tested the third day, you may be considerably better than you were on the second day without having done the thing in between. Guess what's the largest factor in influencing to what extent that's true? It's whether you got 8 hours of sleep or 6
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
So you're saying that if you go to sleep at 22:00, and wake up at say 02:00, you can stay awake and productive for the rest of the day?
:)
That'd be great..
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
Much to my dismay, I'm discovering that as I age I need more sleep, not less. When I was in college, I can distinctly remember being able to go for three or four days without sleep and only minor hallucinations. In my (ahem) advanced years (turning 30 this year) and with children, I find that I need about 9 hours of sleep a night to deal with the vagarities of a 2.5 month old child and still function at work. My caffeine usage is all over the map from one 20oz coffee/day on the weekend to today's 1 US Mt.Dew + 20oz coffee before 9:30am. I find that keeping myself stressfree and cool (work has an ungodly 22'C temperature while home is more like 17'C) means that I'm more alert and able to get by on less. Breakfast also helps, even if it is of the "Instant powder mixed with milk" variety. I can still do the 36 hour awake days, once I get over the 'hump' at about the 20 hour mark, but I'm starting to prefer my cold bedroom with warm blankets :)
Some interesting things I got out of that seminar, haven't had a chance to try most of these out for myself (so I can't personally testify to their value)...
1. You need 8 hours per day. Anything that deviates from 8 hours per day too much will come back to haunt you, the effect is cumulative.
2. If you nap, don't nap for more than 30 minutes. There's high-level and low-level sleep, and over 30 minutes takes you from high-level to low-level, at which point your body is preparing to shut itself down for a long time. Letting that happen outside of a normal sleep schedule will mess you up.
3. Coffee is bad bad bad. When eating, trying eating your proteins first in the morning, and your carbohydrates first in the evening. Whatever you eat first will affect your energy level, and proteins wake you up, while carbs mellow you down.
4. If you need anything to help you either fall asleep (pills) or wake up (alarm clock), you're not getting proper sleep. Good sleep patterns become habitual (apparently).
5. You need a perfectly dark room when you sleep. The only noise you have should be background stuff that drowns out random outbursts of noise.
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
I am one of those people who tends to stay awake later and later, and sleep later and later as a consequence. I eventyally work my way around the clock, with few ill effects. (When left to my own devices, that is, work 9-5 kinda interferes with this.)
THings i have found that have helped wake me up more coherent in the morning:
1: Bright light on a timer, set to turn on 30-40 minutes before i actually wake up. If i am rested, this works instead of an alarm clock. If i still need the alram clsokc, i am somewhat more coherent getting out of the house.
I have also tried tis with an electric blanket to get my body temp up a bit in he mornings, with marginal results.
2: In the evenings, in my main office, i switched over to dimmer red light bulbs, as opposed to the glaringly bright lights i had in there before. I switch to the red light about 10-11 at night. Im not sure how well this will work, but I am getting tired earler than i was.
Betwee nte two of these, im hoping to keep myself programmed to a better sleep wake cycle. I know the light in the morning is very helpfull, im not sure about the dim lights in the evening, but it makes sense.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I'm not sure I can answer this yet, since I've only had since October 18th, 2001 for the clinical trial. Still, the experiment in 4am feedings while watching "Cops" and informercials continues....
My freshman year in college (somewhat overwhelmed by the new social scene) I averaged about 4 hours per night. I fell asleep standing up, etc. It was bad. But the REALLY scary thing was how long it took to recover. That summer, I slept 10+ hours every night and still had trouble staying awake at the wheel on 10 minute trips at noon. It took me years to recover.
Here's an extreme example: I can sleep 8 hours and put in a good day's work. I can alternatively sleep 4 hours and have an extra four hours! But do I get four hours more of work done? No way, probably less. This can be a tricky optimization, especially due to the long-term effects of your sleeping patterns.
For me, I am most productive when getting 8 hours of sleep. With that amount, I NEVER drift toward sleep unintentionally. That's my rule. If I start to doze, I need more sleep.
Speed, and lots of it. Stay up for 1 or 2 weeks! Then sleep for 1 or 2 days!
After the first all nighter, Caffiene is rendered useless. Then ya gotta hit the hard stuff.
You'll look like a saggy black eyed zombie tho.
I recall recently reading an oncology (cancer) report that indicated that the human brain does in fact GROW NEW NEURONS throughout life (haven't seen an online version.) The report summary indicated that the brain loses the nerve connections during the day and re-grows them at night.
A seperate study also showed that the popular anti-depressent prozac makes changes to this neural re-growth.
Further to how this tie's into Ask Slashdot - Neural re-growth normally occurs ONLY DURING REM STAGES OF SLEEP.
This (likely) explains the many reports of people hallucinating after long periods of REM sleep deprivation - A waking brain loses connections in that section and when enough connections are lost - mental coherency is lost.
There you have it folks - a reason for WHY sleep is needed
Lord_Hern (at) h o t m a i l d o t c o m
P.S. - An interesting thing about modafinil (often given to sufferers of sleep apnea - It has demonstrated the ability to restore brain function similar to good REM sleep. I *STRONGLY* suspect that it acts on the brain stem the same way as REM sleep - promoting neural regrowth.
I had a great
I quit smoking at New Years Eve, and since then I have been able to cope with only 6-7 hours of sleep. Before I used to sleep about 10 hours, sometimes even more - it's the darkest time of year here in Finland..
There is an International Plot against you!
(Noone likes your taste in Kitchen Appliances)
So you're saying that if you go to sleep at 22:00, and wake up at say 02:00, you can stay
...
awake and productive for the rest of the day?
I can go to sleep at 3AM and wake at 6AM, and be productive and fully awake for the rest of the day. But I cannot do that for more than two days in a row, or my body's defenses start to weaken and I begin to become ill. I don't become noticeably tired, though.
BTW, the type of "day" whereas I would go to sleep at 3AM and awake at 6AM consists of working from 7AM-4PM, and class from 6PM-9PM (with 30min-45 min drives between work and class, and class and home; I'm typically gone from home from 6:40AM-10:00PM on those days.) I'm a fulltime CS graduate student working fulltime to pay for it. And sometimes, I'm still working on those projects at 3AM
During my undergraduate years, I worked out my sleep patterns as part of a psych class. I have a three-hour pattern, which actually sucks. That means I'm best if I can get 3, 6, or 9 hours of sleep. I feel absolutely horrid with either 7 or 8. For instance, I went to bed at 11PM last night, and woke at 5AM this morning. I felt fine at 5AM but gave into the temptation of the warm bed and went back to sleep until 6:30. Now my head hurts and I'm grumpy. I should have gotten up at 5 and I would be a much happier person today.
But, my best is getting 9 hours of sleep. And that's hard for an adult to accomplish on weekdays, and still get work + the rest of life done.
Sleep Theives, by Stanley Coren.
r en.htm
u iry.asp?isbn=0684831848
http://www.animalnews.com/coren/e_thieves.htm
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/students/VOX/Books/co
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInq
Ten hours a night, please.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
So can I get an REM sleep monitor that can wake me up at the right time?
Sig free since 2/6/2002
ZZZZzzzz.....
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." -- Woody Allen
5-6 hrs are enough for me, if i sleep after dinner
I usually get right around 8 hours of sleep a night. It doesn't feel like enough when I am forced to get up by my alarm, but when I naturally wake up at the same time, I feel fine. My body wants me to wake up around the same time each day. That time is usually 8:30 am.
Unfortunately that doesn't jive with the corporate working world. I think its unfortunate that many employers are unwilling to be flexible with their hours to allow for things such as difference in natural sleeping patterns. I am lucky that my employer finally let me move back my start time by an hour. My last employer was perfect, letting us come in anytime between 6 and 11 am as long as we got our work done. We were salaried, so what's the difference? Its understandable if you have to be there at certain times to work with others, but in cases where you work independently I don't see it as an issue.
I'm interested in hearing others experiences. Do you have jobs with flexibilty enough to sleep as long as you want/need to?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
a friend of mine tells a story that his father lived his whole life with 4 hours of sleep. this guy would just work the day away...
the rest of the story goes that his dad died naturally at around 50. his theory is that dad used up all the life he would have had by not sleeping.
does anyone else see sleep as a sort of spiritual rejuvination -- a battery recharge with the power supply in the sky? because of this belief i tend not to want to try sleep deprevation with any regularity. (then again, as a child, i would tell all the other kids not to play dead. what if god sees you and thinks you really are? -- he'd take your soul away!!! )
Marques Johansson
then there is a simple formula to determine how much sleep you need. Without getting into specifics, there is a positive correlation between your sleeping time and the capacity of your dog's bladder.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Look up Martin Moore-Ede, a Harvard professor who does a lot of sleep research.
By studying ultramarathon type events ( especially one 'race across the atlantic' event) he found that if you need to function on little sleep for extended periods you sleep for 20 minutes every 4 hours.
Any more than 20 minutes and you fall too far down to be woken up easily, much less than 20 does not give you any benefit.
This is only for short term things, though. There are a lot of body processes which require sleep. Several hormones are known only to be produced in significant quantities after several hours of sleep. Lack of sleep also gradually raises your cortisone levels ( this leaches protein from your high-protein body tissues and raises your blood fats) and does a lot of other sub-optimal things.
What he's saying is that there's two factors; short term and long term. Waking up at the wrong point in your sleep cycle will fuck you up for the day; sleep 12 hours but wake up at the wrong time, you're going to feel like crap. Not getting enough sleep "per night" will fuck you up in the long term.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Is it just me, or did anyone else find themselves yawning while reading this thread?
nah wporoablajmmmmmmm i doan needd a03nnye mree tha 5 hars ar awas t 34 4rjo3wa098jr
Has anyone had any luck working out there need to sleep with their employeer. I mean buy this for example. I find that NO matter what time I go to bed, "naturally" I wake up at 8:00am, and I am ready to function for the day. Unfortunately, my employeer requires that I am sitting in my cube by 8:00am which generally means I need to be up by 6:45, which I find to be way way outside my sleep apttern, and I find I am unable to make any adjustment to put that into my sleep pattern. One would figure after 3+years if I was gonna adjust I would have by now. So has anyone been able to convince their boss that the "corprate" get to work by this time standard doesn't work for them, and they would be much more productive if they could sleep say an hour later, and get in at 9:00am. Never mind that the 8:30-9:00am commute to work, would have less traffic hassles as well. Making me much more relaxed and ready for the day when I got here.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I find that I feel much, much more rested on less sleep if I sleep in a routine, smoething I haven't done much of since last summer.
As a college math major with a lot of programming interest, find I have a lot of obstacles to getting sleep, though. For example, after winding up a long day of classes and what little homework I choose to put effort into and band rehearsals (yeah, I'm one of those marching band freaks that puts 12 hours a week away just to perform in front of 12,000 sober fans and 6,000 drunk fratties and sah-rahs every other Saturday) and cooking dinner with the fiancee (I know I'm asking for trolls, I don't care), I typically either have a lot of work left to do or the roomie pressures me into playing another 2-hour Age of Empires scenario he's cooked up. I get to bed around 4 and have to get up early to finish studying for that damn 10 o'clock class and I swear to myself for the third semester in a row NO MORE MORNING CLASSES. Yeah, the frat eats up a lot of time too but I love those guys (and gals). Yea Kappa Kappa Psi.
Nights I do have less to do I am typically stricken with the ever-infectuous coding or deductive muses, and I compulsorily sit down and hack out some proof for a theorem I read about in a topology book or write some algorithm in Maple or even C. I can't afford Mathematica. I am trying to switch to Maxima, the GPL symbolic algebra system. Anyway, my point is this: sleep deprivation is an integral part of the college experience. I don't think I could live my life to its fullest if I spent more time in bed.
But, try and develop some kind of routine. If you are in college, try to schedule classes so that you start the same time each morning. I tried this last semester, but one of the two morning classes was a dumbass discreet math class in the CS department I had weaseled my way out of until now. I never went to that class but on the first day, and it really threw me off for my TR class. BTW, I got a C+ just based on the exam. I forgot which symbol was and and which was or in a circuit diagram. Otherwise, I would have had an A. She took my exam as the whole grade.
In my own personal experience, the exact number of hours I need to sleep can be considerably reduced with seemingly no ill effects. It went something like this: start out from your current level, say, 8 hours. Then sleep half an hour less for a month, no exceptions. No late sleeping on weekends, and go to bed at roughly the same time every night. After that month, your body will pretty much have compensated. Then take away another half hour for a month. Then another. Then ...
Sooner or later you'll hit the barrier where your body can't compensate any more - don't continue beyond that point, because you'll just wear yourself out. My personal low is about 6 hours - YMMV.
BTW, if you REALLY want to know how little sleep is actually necessary, just have kids :-)
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Give up on caffiene. If you do, it's more useful when you need it most. If you have a regular dose every day, stop.
In general, water is much more effective for keeping people awake. In fact, most people get tired around 1 or 2 in the afternoon not because they're sleep deprived, but rather because they're dehydrated. Carry a bottle of water around with you all day long, and you'll notice a difference.
a couple of years ago, I was working a job that required a 2 1/2 hour commute twice a day. We commuted by van, leaving at 4:10 AM to get there by 6:45 AM, and then departed at 3:15 PM to get home by 6 PM. I had a part-time job as a bartender, and I worked at that job from 7 PM to about 2:30 am. The only time I ever got any sleep was while I was riding in the van to and from work. Plus, there were many times I can emember where I wasn't able to sleep, either from conversation, caffiene or other chemicals, so I know there were plenty of days when I got by with only 2 hours! Age had nothing to do with it, either, since I was already over 30! And, yes, it was worth it.
...not that I'm a pirate.. Hell I've never even fired a cannon. - oldwolf13
Jeez, it's not like you can just turn it on and off... doesn't anyone else find that their productivity/alertness/smartness starts to fade gradually when you reach the end of a long day? What good is staying up for 24 hours if you spend the last half of that making stupid mistakes?
The point of keeping yourself well-slept is to be at peak form when you're awake.
Invest in a good mattress and a duvet -- maybe sleep will start looking like a more appealling activity! And you'll be better for it the next day.
Here is a story about a handspring powernapping module that will help you take cat-naps and pull you out at the exact time necessary to do the most good. It's supposed to be based on Nasa research.
If I go to sleep at 22.00 and wake up at 02.00, I will be somewhat recharged. I won't be 'up and at 'em', but if I need to do something I will be able to.
Ideally, I need at least four hours to be functional for the rest of the day, six to be recharged, and eight to be energetic and optimistic, but sleeping two hours will let me keep doing whatever I was doing for a few hours more.
--Dan
I used to do this when I worked 12 hour night shifts. I would use 10 minutes of my 30 minute break to eat, then goto my car and hold my keys in my hand and rest my hand on my knee. I'd sleep until I dropped the keys. I usually slept for 15 or 20 mins. That was enough to keep me alive the rest of the night.
Well, then they have to make up for it on the weekend, or they have some serious brain disorder, and not the kind you want to have. Almost everybody needs about 8h of sleep per night. Some people need more. If you sleep less than what you need, you incur a sleep debt which you will have to repay. If the debt gets too large, you'll just keep falling asleep briefly throughout the day and not even notice (which can be rather dangerous). And if you are living with a large sleep debt, it's bad for your health.
Most Americans are already chronically sleep-deprived and suffering numerous health problems as a consequence.
One research group that has done excellent work on this and published a lot is Prof. Dement at Stanford (no, I'm not making up the name).
He has a guide specifically for students.
Now, I get around 7-8 hours a night, sometimes a lot less (I'm a grad. student). I have experiment with getting more, and I noticed that I feel a lot better with 9 hours of sleep than with 8. As a student, though, I find it hard enough to get 7 or 8. I feel 'normal' on 8, but feel better than normal on 9.
If you want to find your limit, your minimized sleep requirement, have a baby, preferrably two. I've been working on five a night for three years.
illegitimii non ingravare
There are a few things you could try:
Meditate. A half hour of meditation could reduce the need for sleep by several hours.
Or, more simply, rest throughout the day. Take a few 5 to 15 minute breaks were you do nothing but relax and breathe.
Brainwave syncronization devices also claim to reduce the need for sleep. You can spend hundreds of dollars on one, or you can get the free software BWGen. All you need are headphones.
If you always needed a lot more sleep than others and you wet your bed until much older than "normal" kids, if you kick your bed while asleep, if you talk asleep or have sudden breaks in your breathing. . .
you might be suffering from some form of parasomnia. I have it myself and was recently diagnosed with it. I was always like you describe. I actually had to be dressed in bed until I was in my late teens because it was so difficult for me to wake up. Noises and light were torture to me in the first 40 minutes after waking.
Consult a neurologist and he might prescribe a very small quantity of a tricyclic anti-depressant which will regulate your sleep (This is not to sleep, but to regulate it). The difference is like that between night and day. I take 10mgs of a drug that's prescribed with a minimum of 40mgs, so it takes very little to actually benefit from sleep.
is light therapy anything like "light reading" or "light entertainment"? (I'm picturing a psychiatrist and client having a friendly chat over a few beers ...)
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
I seem to be optimum at 8 hours a night, once I work off the sleep debt I'll even wake up without the alarm (otherwise I sleep through it).
From this and from reading this thread, it just seems that different people need different amounts of sleep and they have different schedules for going to sleep and waking up.
Bleh!
On weekdays i tend to sleep anywhere between 7 and 4 hours. On weekends ill stay up really late till about 3, 4 or 6 am.. then crash for 10 to 12 hours. The next day ill sleep for 8 hours and be rested. Only thing about sleeping 4 hours a night weekdays is, usually about wednesday I come home and fall asleep for an hour or 2 after work. I have missed joining a radio show-irc chat a few times because of that.
Some things i have noticed about sleep is, if you seem to be oversleeping the alarm clock, or needing naps, or feeling the need to go to bed early, you probably are getting sick or are already sick. Back when i broke my leg in high school, i would get 8 hours of sleep a night and fall asleep during the first 2 classes and also come home and sleep 2 to 4 hours for a total of 10 to 12 hours a day.
I have also noticed when my wisdom teeth are on the move i tend to sleep more. No, I dont have the time or the money to get them taken out, and I do have enough room. Bad headaches and migranes will put me into a long sleep as well.
I have stayed up over a period of 3 days/2 nights. It's tough to do, but programming gets interesting sometimes when you are no longer thinking on a single track.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
All,
I read 'The promise of sleep' by William C. Dement and it was interesting. It is all about sleep. He is probably the worlds foremost athority on the subject. He basicly says that sleep deprevation is one of the biggest health risks in the country.
The way he puts it is that people need aprox. 8 hours of sleep a day and anything below that is added up night after night (he calls it sleep debt) and until you 'make it up' you are not at 100%. It is full of interesting tid bits and backed up by studys he has done for many years.
E
a nice way is to get prescribed dexedrine (convince a shrink you have ADD) stay up all night, about 2 hours before you have to get up take a tablet, fall asleep ASAP (if you can do this in under 30 minutes you should be more than OK) and in 2 hours, its like someone just flipped your "on" switch, instant alertness. Probably not healthy, but damn efficient! =)
there's enough time to sleep when you're dead.
Workout, and you can try taking GHB/GBL ;-)
4 hours and you are very refreshed and awake.
it works
This article is quite the opposite of the answer you're looking for, but read it nonetheless!
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
Personally, I find productivity can be much higher if I DO sleep right, as enough to finish things in a solid run instead of constantly getting frustrated, and drifting off due to dire need of sleep. Nothing is worth giving up sleep on a regular basis for... so forget the social life bullshit, you've got plenty of years ahead of you for that.
2 lines of glass/night over 5 nights + one serious 15 hour doze per week will have you on top of your form allowing you to enjoy 120 hours of productivity w/o the burden of sleep!!!!
Brought to you by:
-The happy tweeker coalition-
>>the human brain does in fact GROW NEW NEURONS throughout life
I read about this study too, then read that no one has been able to reproduce the results and most scientists doubt it.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison